[Page 2536]

HALIFAX, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2026

Sixty-fifth General Assembly

First Session

11:05 A.M.

SPEAKER

Hon. Danielle Barkhouse

DEPUTY SPEAKERS

Marco MacLeod, Tom Taggart, Julie Vanexan

THE SPEAKER » : Please rise for the playing and singing of "O Canada."

[The national anthem was played.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. We will begin the Daily Routine.

PRESENTING AND READING PETITIONS

PRESENTING REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : As Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I beg leave to table the annual report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for 2025.

THE SPEAKER « » : The report is tabled.

TABLING REPORTS, REGULATIONS AND OTHER PAPERS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Justice.

HON. SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : Pursuant to Subsection 5B(4) of the House of Assembly Act, I beg leave to table a report by the chief electoral officer of recommended adjustments to two electoral boundaries, as well as my response to that report.

THE SPEAKER « » : The report is tabled.

STATEMENTS BY MINISTERS

[Page 2537]

GOVERNMENT NOTICES OF MOTION

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs.

RESOLUTION NO. 362

HON. TWILA GROSSE « » : Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas February is African Heritage Month, a time of deep significance in Nova Scotia, a province shaped by more than 400 years of African Nova Scotia history, resilience, and cultural contribution; and

Whereas the provincial proclamation for the 2026 African Heritage Month reaffirmed the commitment to recognition, inclusion, and opportunity, guided by this theme, "Strength in Unity - Moving Forward with Purpose, Prosperity, Power and Progress";

Whereas African Heritage Month is a call to action, inviting all Nova Scotians to learn more from African Nova Scotian history, support community-led efforts, and honour all voices and contributions that strengthen Nova Scotia's social, cultural, and economic fabric;

Therefore be it resolved that we commit to moving forward together, with purpose and care, recognizing the strength of our diversity and working to build a Nova Scotia where every community has the opportunity to grow, contribute, and succeed.

Speaker, I request waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

Bill No. 203 - An Act to Amend Chapter 1 (1992 Supplement) of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the House of Assembly Act. (Hon. Scott Armstrong)

[Page 2538]

Bill No. 204 - An Act to Amend Chapter 76 of the Acts of 1983, an Act Relating to Taxation by the Town of Kentville of Industrial and Commercial Properties in the Annapolis Valley Industrial Park. (Hon. John Lohr)

Bill No. 205 - An Act to Amend Chapter 5 of the Acts of 2011, the Elections Act, and Chapter 1 (1992 Supplement) of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the House of Assembly Act. (Hon. Scott Armstrong)

Bill No. 206 - An Act to Avoid Conflict of Interest by Members of the House of Assembly, Members of the Executive Council and Public Employees. (Hon. Becky Druhan)

Bill No. 207 - An Act to Make Child Care Affordable and Accessible. (Claudia Chender)

Bill No. 208 - An Act to Amend Chapter 380 of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the Public Utilities Act, Respecting a Rate Plan. (Hon. Derek Mombourquette)

Bill No. 209 - An Act Respecting Interest on Estimated Billing by Electric Utilities. (Hon. Derek Mombourquette)

Bill No. 210 - An Act to Amend Chapter 380 of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the Public Utilities Act, Respecting a Savings Review of Nova Scotia Power Incorporated. (Hon. Iain Rankin)

[11:15 a.m.]

Bill No. 210 - An Act to Amend Chapter 380 of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the Public Utilities Act, Respecting a Savings Review of Nova Scotia Power Incorporated. (Hon. Iain Rankin)

Bill No. 211 - An Act to Amend Chapter 380 of the Revised Statutes, 1989, the Public Utilities Act, to Restrict Nova Scotia Power Incorporated's Return on Equity. (Hon. Iain Rankin)

THE SPEAKER « » : Ordered that these bills be read a second time on a future day.

NOTICES OF MOTION

STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Inverness.

MABOU COMM. HALL: EVENTS - RECOG.

[Page 2539]

KYLE MACQUARRIE « » : Speaker, Mabou Community Hall is at the heart of life in Mabou, a place where music, tradition, and community come alive.

In the summer, Tuesday Night Ceilidhs fill the hall with lively Cape Breton fiddling, step dancing, and square sets. Over the years the hall has welcomed legendary musicians like Natalie MacMaster, the late John Morris Rankin, and Howie MacDonald, who have shared their music with our community.

Throughout the year, the hall hosts community dinners, dances, and celebrations, creating space for families and friends to connect and mark life's special moments. When winter arrives, the hall transforms into The Snug Pub, a cozy Friday night gathering where people come together for music, conversation, and warmth on a cold Friday night. During the holiday season, it even welcomes Santa for the children, adding festive cheer to the community's celebrations.

From ceilidhs and winter gatherings to dinners, dances, and holiday festivals, Mabou Community Hall is more than a venue. It is a place where tradition lives.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, I beg leave to make an introduction.

THE SPEAKER « » : Please do.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, with us today in the gallery we have Lyle Mailman and Erin McInnis with Woodbine Community of Nova Scotia, who are the subject of my member's statement. I ask the House to extend them the warmest of greetings. (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : Welcome to the People's House. We hope you enjoy your time here.

The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

WOODBINE COMM.: WATER METERING ACTION - RECOG.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, when a community rallies around an injustice, they can be a formidable force. In the case of the Woodbine Community of Nova Scotia, they even win Supreme Court cases. Woodbine is a land-lease community in Beaver Bank that recently stood up to the unfortunately common practice of water-metering - devices affixed to the homes of people that are used to charge them for their water. Last year, committee members Nicole Herd and Eloise Graves, alongside their fellow resident, launched a landmark court case that proved the illegality of this practice.

[Page 2540]

Woodbine Community of Nova Scotia is an organization formed out of residents' solidarity with one another. Its goal is to disseminate information and improve the cohesion of their community.

They aren't done, either. They plan on growing into an advocacy platform for land-lease residents province-wide.

I ask that all present join me in recognizing the Woodbine Community and its residents for their resolve and for providing leadership and representation to folks who so often go without.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Timberlea-Prospect.

SAVE OUR OLD FORESTS: INGRAM RIVER AREA - PRESERVE

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : Speaker, I want to recognize the contributions of Kristen Hopkins for outstanding leadership with Save Our Old Forests. Through her efforts, a free letter writing workshop was organized to empower residents to advocate for the protection of the Ingram River Wilderness Area from high production forestry.

This initiative exemplifies how community engagement and advocacy can shape the future of our shared natural heritage and protect forestry conservation. The Ingram River Wilderness Area is of immense ecological importance. It serves as a vital corridor for the endangered mainland moose and contains the oldest forest in the Maritimes as highlighted by the St. Margarets Bay Stewardship Association.

Preserving these ancient trees and habitats is essential not only for biodiversity but also for future generations. As a former Minister of Lands and Forestry, I was proud to sign the province's first Mi'kmaw forestry agreement, a partnership that honours Indigenous stewardship and sets a new standard for collaborative land management. This action halted planned clear cuts, prioritizing the protection of ecologically sensitive areas through selective cutting in line with Professor Lahey's triad approach, demonstrating a strong commitment to sustainable forestry.

I strongly encourage all members of this House to support a balanced conservation effort and to collaborate in safeguarding these irreplaceable forests to ensure that our province remains a leader in responsible forestry and community-driven stewardship.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Uniacke.

HON. BRAD JOHNS « » : Speaker, I beg leave to make two introductions before my statement, if I could.

THE SPEAKER « » : Please do.

[Page 2541]

BRAD JOHNS « » : In the East Gallery today, I would like to recognize that we have with us Brian Cooper and his wife, Carol. Brian can often be seen around the streets of Halifax picking up garbage and welcoming visitors to the city. I think he just put out a book called Falls and Celebrations of Halifax: The Coop Chronicles. I don't know if that was a real book or a joke. I would ask the members of the Legislature to welcome them both here today. (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : Welcome to the House. I know Brian well. He was a wonderful teacher in my constituency for years. We hope you enjoy your time here.

The honourable member for Sackville-Uniacke.

BRAD JOHNS « » : Additionally today in the East Gallery is a surprise visitor for me this morning. I'm not sure if she's here to say hi or here to bum money, but my oldest daughter Jenna is here this morning. With Jenna is her boyfriend, Bradley Jardine. I would like to ask the members of the Legislature to please welcome them today. I'll be passing the hat in a few minutes. (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : I don't even know what to say about that one. Welcome to the House. He keeps his wallet in his right pocket. We hope you enjoy your time here.

The honourable member for Sackville-Uniacke.

SACKVILLE PROPERTY SERVICES: LOCAL BUSINESS - RECOG.

HON. BRAD JOHNS « » : Speaker, today I rise to highlight a local business in the Sackville-Uniacke area: Sackville Property Services, which is a company owned by 19-year-old Ross Osmond.

Ross started this company in spring of 2024, when he was only 17 years old and just graduating from high school. They are now coming up on their second anniversary this spring.

I would like to take an opportunity to congratulate Mr. Osmond on his accomplishments, especially at such a young age. He and his partner, David Webb, who is also 19 and joined him in 2025, have been providing property services in Sackville for the last two years. They're passionate about landscaping and their community.

Speaker, I ask the members to join me in wishing both Ross and David a successful season and all the best in their future business endeavours.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

[Page 2542]

PETERS, AIYA: ATHLETICISM - CONGRATS.

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Speaker, I rise today to honour Bridgewater's Aiya Peters, a competitive swimmer, volunteer, and proud member of the Lunenburg-Queens Special Olympics team.

Last July, Aiya lit up the 2025 Nova Scotia Special Olympics Summer Games at the St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, not only competing but leading her region as flag-bearer alongside head coach Kevin Wilson. Aiya shredded her races, winning two gold medals in the 200-metre freestyle and the 100-metre breaststroke, achieving personal bests in both events.

Aiya also qualified to represent Nova Scotia at the Canada 2025 Summer Games, held in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador last August. Although a medical issue prevented her from racing, she energetically cheered on her teammates. An observer commented if there was a medal for courage, positivity, sportsmanship, and supporting your team, it would sure go to Aiya.

Aiya is energetic, caring, infectiously positive and exemplifies true sportsmanship and friendship above all. She embraces being autistic and proudly shares her story to help others understand, accept, and include everyone in our community.

Congratulations to Aiya Peters. Her achievements inspire us, and her character uplifts our community.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

DART. GEN. HOSP.: ATL. CAN. RECORD - CONGRATS.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Speaker, I rise today with deep pride to recognize an extraordinary achievement at the Dartmouth General Hospital in Dartmouth South. The orthopaedic surgery team at the Dartmouth General, led by Dr. Sniderman, has broken its own Atlantic Canadian record for the most joint replacements completed by a single team, in a single operating room, in a single day. That's right folks, eight joint replacements in one day, breaking their record of seven.

Accomplishing this feat speaks directly to the culture of innovation and excellence that defines Dartmouth General Hospital. Through thoughtful planning, seamless teamwork and a relentless commitment to improving patient care, this team has shown what is possible when we challenge ourselves to do better. Not by cutting corners, but by refining processes and working smarter together.

This work is not about setting records, it's about reducing wait times, restoring mobility, easing pain and giving Nova Scotians their quality of life back sooner. This is meaningful progress and its truly hopeful.

[Page 2543]

To the whole team at the Dartmouth General Hospital, from the cleaning staff to the surgeons and everyone in between, I offer a huge congratulations. Dartmouth is incredibly proud of you, and so is Nova Scotia.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

KEARNS, MAX: ECMA NOM. - CONGRATS.

HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : Speaker, I was reading the paper today and I saw that a young guy that I saw growing up - I know his family well - he received a nomination for the East Coast Music Awards. Max Kearns of Sydney. He's a graduate of Sydney Academy. He went to Saint Mary's to play football but picked up photography while he was studying criminology. It has become a passion for him.

I rise in my place to recognize Max and congratulate him on his nomination. I'll also recognize his father, Nigel. Nigel is a big part of the music industry in Cape Breton and beyond. It's great to see Max doing what he loves. So I rise in my place to recognize Max Kearns.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Clare.

COMEAU, COUN. BRIAN: DEATH OF - TRIBUTE

RYAN ROBICHAUD: Speaker, I want to take a moment to remember Brian Comeau who we lost last June. He was a devoted husband to Lisa, a proud father of Daralyn and Jeremy, and loving grandfather to Nyomi. As some of you know, Daralyn is my constituency coordinator.

Brian was also a municipal councillor in Clare for over 20 years, and an active member of our community. He helped anyone who needed assistance, asking nothing in return. Brian left a lasting impression on everyone who had the pleasure of meeting him. His kindness, work ethic and willingness to help live on with Daralyn and Jeremy. I see it every day in our office when Daralyn works diligently to assist the constituents of Clare just like her father.

As a community we mourn Brian as a husband, father, family member, friend, councillor and all-around great man. He is surely missed but never forgotten.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

FETAL ALC. N.S.: FASD RESEARCH SUPPORT - RECOG.

[Page 2544]

LISA LACHANCE « » : Speaker, I rise today in solidarity with families, caregivers, and individuals across Nova Scotia living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. FASD is a lifelong brain-based disability caused by prenatal alcohol exposure. It affects memory, learning, impulse control, and daily functioning.

In Nova Scotia, FASD is not formally recognized as a distinct disability within provincial policy. Caregivers for those with FASD are often left to navigate health, education, justice, and community services on their own. Individuals with FASD are often misunderstood because many of our systems are not FASD informed.

Fetal Alcohol Nova Scotia is an organization working to increase awareness and education on FASD, and support policy changes that would benefit those living with FASD. Other provinces in Canada have dedicated funding, diagnostic services, and coordinated FASD support. FANS is working to see that Nova Scotia will join them to provide this important health care. Their vision is for a province with decreasing prevalence in FASD.

I'm proud to stand in solidarity with them. Their co-founders, Allan Mountford and Rochelle Howlett wanted to join us, but weather and changing times thwarted that. But I really recognize their work.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cumberland North.

FAGE, HON. ERNEST: DEATH OF - TRIBUTE

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : Speaker, my colleague from Cumberland South has already risen to bring honour to a wonderful man from our area, the Honourable Ernest Fage. I would like to rise today as well to honour him.

Ernest served here in this Legislative Assembly from 1997 to 2009, for 12 years. He was an Executive Council member and held 10 different Cabinet posts. Ernest was known for his ability to engage with everyone he met. His passion for public service was passed on to his children.

[11:30 a.m.]

I remember him asking me to help him with one of his nomination meetings, long before I put my name forward for public service, and he made a real impression on me and many others. He worked closely with the mayor at the time, Jerry Hallee, and all municipal councillors.

Speaker, I ask that we all think of his family, his beautiful wife, Elaine, and his children, and we thank Ernest for all his service to Cumberland North and to all Nova Scotia. May he rest in peace.

[Page 2545]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Kings South.

RIPLEY, CHIEF JASON: FIRE SERV. LEADER - THANKS

JULIE VANEXAN « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize Chief Jason Ripley for his outstanding service and leadership in our community and, in particular, for his role as fire chief at the Greenwich Fire Hall.

Chief Ripley has been a steady presence for years, someone people could count on in moments of urgency, and a leader who helped strengthen the safety and preparedness of the community he served. Beyond the fire service, he has been a community leader in many ways, always showing up, stepping forward, and putting others first.

Chief Ripley has recently accepted a new opportunity. While we are proud of him, his departure will certainly be felt. He will be deeply missed by his fellow firefighters, by those who worked alongside him, and by the many residents whose lives have been made safer because of his commitment.

On behalf of the residents of Kings South, I thank Chief Jason Ripley for his years of service and dedication, and I wish him every success and happiness in the next chapter.

I ask all members of this House to join me in recognizing Chief Jason Ripley today.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Fairview-Clayton Park.

HFX. NORTHWEST TRAIL ASSOC.: TRAIL MAINTENANCE - THANKS

LINA HAMID « » : Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Halifax Northwest Trails Association on the successful opening of Phase 2 of the Mainland Common trails extension.

Building on the momentum of last year's expansion, this new space provides even greater access to the natural beauty of our district. This achievement is a direct result of the tireless dedication of the association's board and volunteers who have spent countless hours planning, clearing, and maintaining these paths for the enjoyment of all residents.

The importance of these trails extends far beyond recreation, as our community faces increasing pressure from proposed developments that threaten local ecosystems, and the preservation of our natural areas becomes a matter of urgency. These trails service a vital green corridor, protecting biodiversity, and ensuring that future generations of Nova Scotians can still find peace and wilderness in the heart of the city.

[Page 2546]

I ask all members of the House to join me in thanking the Halifax Northwest Trails Association.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Eastern Shore.

WHITE, MAX: 90^TH BIRTHDAY - BEST WISHES

HON. KENT SMITH « » : Speaker, I rise today to bring recognition to an outstanding member of the Porters Lake community: Max White, who turned 90 years old on February 20^th. Max was born in Mooseland and grew up in New Chester and Moser River, in several lumber camps owned by his father.

Max met his wife, Annie, in 1959, and they married in 1966. They were together for 49 and a half years until her passing in 2016. Max and Annie moved to Porters Lake in 1969, and he started his own trucking and excavation company, which he actively ran until the age of 89. Max was a member of the Truckers Association of Nova Scotia for the past 44 years and served as their president.

Max was also a 50-year member of the Porters Lake Community Centre. In his free time, he enjoys gospel music, concerts, variety shows, and he still loves going for drives on the back roads. Max is always available and willing to help anyone in need, regardless of the hour.

Max, thank you for your many contributions to our Eastern Shore community, and on behalf of the members of the Legislature, I wish you a very happy birthday.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

QUINPOOL BUS. ASSOC.: PET PARADE - RECOG.

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : Speaker, the Quinpool Road Mainstreet District Association and Oxford Taproom's annual SPCA Pet Parade is a festive community event in Halifax Chebucto that brings holiday cheer to pets and humans alike. Every November, pet owners and their furry friends gather on Quinpool Road to take part in this joyful parade, and often the pets are dressed in holiday outfits, like Santa suits, elf ears, and cozy sweaters.

The parade begins at the Oxford Taproom and is led by Santa Claus and other seasonal characters along Quinpool Road before returning to the Taproom. After the walk, participants can take Santa photos with their pets - a chance to capture festive memories while supporting the Nova Scotia SPCA. Thanks to all the hard work of AJ and team at the Oxford Taproom, they were able to donate $1,000 to the Nova Scotia SPCA.

[Page 2547]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Colchester North.

JOHNSON, MITCHELL: COMM. SERV. - HONOUR

TOM TAGGART « » : Today, I rise to speak about a 25-year-old man who exemplifies the best of Nova Scotian youth. When Mitchell Johnson of Londonderry heard a crashing sound, he ran out of his house and came upon a car that had severed a telephone pole. Mitchell discovered a distraught woman trapped inside the car. He remained calm and approached the woman trying to reassure her that she would be alright. Seeing no other way to get into the car, Mitchell used his fist to smash the car window injuring his hand. While doing all of this, Mitchell notified 911 and held the woman's hand to keep her calm.

Nova Scotia is in safe hands with caring people like Mitchell Johnson. Thank you.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

FOOTE, IVAN/BAILEY, PATRICK: DEDICATED WALKERS - RECOG.

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize Ivan Foote and Patrick Bailey, two dedicated walkers whose commitment to staying active has made a lasting impression at Bridgewater's HB Studios Sports Centre. Ivan, aged 90, and Patrick, just a few years younger, made the indoor track part of their daily routine, walking roughly four kilometres about five days a week. Last October, they reached an impressive milestone, logging 7,000 kilometres with the Kilometer Club, which began in 2020. Their consistency has been so remarkable that the facility's recognition chart has had to be expanded to keep up.

Patrick, a retired engineer, first joined track in 2012 after receiving a warm welcome from Ivan, a former member of the military, who invited him to walk alongside others. From that moment, the friendship began, one that continued even through COVID-19 restrictions when they took their walks outdoors.

Ivan and Patrick remind us that physical activity is about more than fitness. It's about connection, routine, and community. Their presence helps set the tone for a welcoming morning walking group where people look out for one another. I ask members to join me in recognizing their dedication and the positive example that they set for Nova Scotians.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

JOHNSON, GUYLEIGH:

SEN. DON OLIVER BLACK VOICES AWARD - CONGRATS.

[Page 2548]

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : Speaker, every year, the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia awards the Senator Don Oliver Black Voices Prize to emerging Black and African Nova Scotian writers. The endowment for the prize was established by the late Honourable Don Oliver with the support of the BMO Financial Group. The prize recognizes the barriers to literary creation and recognition faced by Black and African Nova Scotian writers who have been and still are marginalized by systemic inequality including within Canadian publishing.

The 2026 recipient was Dartmouth North's Guyleigh Johnson. This is not the first time I've brought up Guyleigh's name in the Legislature and I'm sure it won't be the last. Guyleigh's career has been one of prolific creativity. She has published two books and directed her own short film. She has been nominated for a Canadian Screen Award and has been the recipient of the Ancestral Roots Award presented by the Delmore "Buddy" Daye Learning Institute. Guyleigh's prize-winning submission is an excerpt from Full Court Press, a new young-adult novel that follows fifteen-year-old Dee, an African Nova Scotian boy from Dartmouth, as he navigates grief, peer pressure, and failure.

I ask the House to join me in congratulating Guyleigh Johnson on her continued success and recognition.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Antigonish.

MACLELLAN, COUN. MARY: LIBRARY NAMING - TRIBUTE

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Councilor Mary MacLellan on the naming of the community room at Antigonish's "People's Place" Town and County Library in her honour. This recognition is a fitting tribute to her lifelong dedication to education, learning, and community service. As both an educator and a community leader, Councilor MacLellan has consistently championed the power of knowledge, curiosity, and access to learning for people of all ages. Her deep appreciation for libraries as welcoming spaces of discovery and connection makes this honour especially meaningful. It is truly appropriate that her name will be permanently associated with a place that reflects her values and her lasting impact on the community.

I want to thank Councilor MacLellan for her 34 years of leadership as a municipal councilor, her deep commitment to Antigonish, and the example she sets for current and future generations of community leaders. Congratulations on this well-deserved honour.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

NEW WATERFORD COAL BOWL CLASSIC:

BASKETBALL TOURN. - RECOG.

[Page 2549]

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, I rise to recognize the New Waterford Coal Bowl Classic, a national basketball tournament held in New Waterford at the Breton Education Centre.

This week-long event is not just about basketball. The participating students from schools across Canada join school-sponsored educational, social, and cultural activities. In this tournament, you come as a stranger, you leave as a friend - or in some people's cases, they come for 15 years.

Coal Bowl's board of directors works hard to plan and organize this fantastic week. The volunteers are bar none, and it's truly a fun and communal experience for all. I have been known to get into the game a little too much. In fact, I've lost my voice a number of times during these games.

I want to congratulate all teams for playing their hardest and representing their schools extremely well. Congratulations to Breton Education Centre's boys on winning gold.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Victoria-The Lakes.

GLENBOURNE INC.: AGRIC. INNOVATION - RECOG.

DIANNE TIMMINS: Speaker, I rise today to recognize Glenbourne Inc., a shining example of agricultural innovation and a true Cape Breton story.

This family venture began with childhood memories of the Glenbourne kids playing baseball with crab apples and an old family tree, an inspiration that grew into a passion for crafting fine cider. In 2017, they planted their first 500 apple trees on their family farmland, and through hard work and community support, the orchard has now grown into more than 4,000 trees.

In 2020, Glenbourne opened a modern production facility, blending tradition and innovation to produce locally crafted fruit juice and fruit-based alcoholic beverages. Looking ahead, they plan to expand to 12,000 trees by 2027, add pear varieties, and develop a taproom and agritourism accommodations, helping to grow Victoria County's profile as a destination for visitors.

I ask all members to join me in celebrating Glenbourne Inc.'s innovation, dedication, and lasting contribution to Nova Scotia's agricultural future.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

GOV'T. (N.S.): BUDGET CUTS TO MARGINALIZED COMMS. - REVERSE

[Page 2550]

SUZY HANSEN « » : I rise today to talk about how these budget cuts affect our African Nova Scotian communities and Indigenous folks. The Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs has spoken about how African Heritage Month is a time of deep significance, history, cultural contributions with recognition and inclusion of opportunities, a call to action, supporting communities and leading by action.

I find it hard to swallow these reductions in that same spirit. The grant reductions affect the Departments of Education, CCTH, Health, OSD, Justice, and many more, targeting scholarships, decades-long funding for historical programs that remove barriers for African Nova Scotian students. These deep cuts to the budget completely affect our communities and will affect them for generations to come.

I'd like all members of this House to remember why we are here, who we serve - and that's all communities. Why should these communities bear the brunt of this government's poor financial management?

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Glace Bay-Dominion.

GLACE BAY: 125^TH ANNIV. - CONGRATS.

HON. JOHN WHITE « » : On January 18, 2026, we proudly celebrated the 125^th anniversary of Glace Bay, a community built on grit, heart, and an unbreakable sense of pride. Celebrations will continue all year round.

For 125 years, Glace Bay has been shaped by coal miners, fishers, steelworkers, families, and volunteers who show up every day, not just for work but for one another. It's a place where hard times are met with harder work and where neighbours are never strangers. Glace Bay's history helped power this province and this country, but its greatest strength has always been its people, who are resilient, generous, and proud of where they come from.

As we honour the past, we also look forward to the future - one that continues to be driven by community, culture, and opportunity. Happy 125^th anniversary to Glace Bay. Our story matters and it continues to be written every single day.

[11:45 a.m.]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

CCTH: PUBLISHERS ASSISTANCE FUND CUT - IMPACTS

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : As we all know, there are deep cuts in this budget to the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage, including the Publishers Assistance Fund.

[Page 2551]

I just want to take a moment to list some of the people who will be affected by these deep cuts. We all know there are about seven independent publishers, eight that get this funding or got this funding. The cuts also affect the writers in this province: Danica Roache, Guyleigh Johnson, Tom Ryan, Briana Corr Scott, Nicola Davison, David Chapman - they all live in Dartmouth North, by the way - also Rachel Reid and Alexander MacLeod and Rebecca Rose, who live in other parts of Dartmouth. Then a great list: Cathy LeBlanc, Shauntay Grant, Kate Beaton, Linden MacIntyre, Lynn Coady, Ami McKay, Andre Fenton, Stephanie Domet, Sarah Emsley, Lesley Crewe, Lesley Choyce, Aly Dort, Heather Fegan, Colleen Thompson, Julie Larade, Anna Quon, Jim Beckman, K. R. Byggdin, Bretton Loney, Aimée Bourque, Lindsay Cameron Wilson, Alison Smith, Sue Goyette, Amanda Peters, Martha Paynter, also the AfterWords Literary Festival, also the Cabot Trail Writers Festival, also all of the independent booksellers in Nova Scotia who will feel the impacts, the economic and cultural impacts of these cuts, Speaker.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.

AUSTIN, DEEDEE: ECMA NOMS. - CONGRATS.

HON. BRIAN WONG « » : I rise today to recognize the exceptional talent of one of our community's brightest stars, DeeDee Austin, following her three recent nominations for the 2026 East Coast Music Awards. DeeDee is a proud Indigenous singer-songwriter and an alumna of Lockview High, who has been making waves in the music industry since she was 16 years old. To watch her grow from a local student into a 19-time award-winning, award nominee is a testament to what can happen when talent meets tireless hard work.

This year DeeDee has been nominated for some of ECMA's highest honours. DeeDee spans Entertainer of the Year, Release of the Year, and Pop Release of the Year, for her song "Somebody New." These nominations are a well-deserved recognition of her artistry and her ability to connect with audiences of all ages. DeeDee carries herself with grace and energy that makes our community incredibly proud to call her one of our own. I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating DeeDee.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

DO, LILLIE: BEST NAIL TECH. AWARD - CONGRATS.

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : Today I rise to acknowledge the hard work and artistic talent of Lillie Do, the proud Gold Winner of the Coast Awards Best Nail Technician. Located on Quinpool Road Lillie provides exceptional services at Lee's Nails, a locally owned small business that contributes to the vibrancy of our community. Attention to details is what makes a business success.

[Page 2552]

Just as important are the warm interactions with customers that brighten their day and leave them feeling polished, confident, and ready to take on the world.

Lillie's passion for her craft and her commitment to excellence are evident in every client. Small businesses are the backbone of our local economy and dedicated professionals like Lillie help them thrive.

Please join me in recognizing the combination of skill, care and dedication that earned Lillie this well-deserved honour and congratulate her on the outstanding achievement.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Shelburne.

LUCY THE LOBSTER: WINTER TOURISM AMBASSADOR - RECOG.

HON. NOLAN YOUNG « » : I rise today to recognize Lucy the Lobster, a special ambassador for winter tourism in our province. She is also the star of the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl which is a month-long festival in February. Throughout the festival, Lucy is at Capt. Kat's Lobster Shack, which is her favourite spa, where she greets visitors and even poses for "shellfies" - get it?

On February 2^nd, Lucy makes her annual Groundhog Day/Lobster Day prediction, a tradition drawing both locals and visitors to the area. Lucy's reputation for accurate predictions in her nine-year career has earned her a loyal following from across the province and beyond wishing to meet her and to take part in this Lobster Crawl festival. Her charm, her accuracy and her unmistakable personality has helped elevate the festival into a memorable winter tourism event and experience for local businesses and the lobster industry.

Speaker, I respectfully ask all members to join me in recognizing Lucy the Lobster for her role in promoting Nova Scotia, our lobster heritage and community pride one prediction and one "shellfie" at a time. (Laughter) (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

SACKVILLE MINOR HOCKEY: RISING STARS - RECOG.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, we've acknowledged the incredible role that four Nova Scotian hockey players played in the silver medal success of our Olympic hockey teams recently. Nova Scotia also figures to play a key role in the future of our country's sport.

The many faces of Sackville Minor Hockey Association have ensured that the future of Canada's game remains very bright. Last month at the MacDonald Gallagher U13B Tournament in Membertou, both of Sackville's youth 13B teams fought their way to the championship final, bringing home silver and gold. This month, Sackville's U5 and U7 teams, the Flyers, Rangers, Blazers, and Kings, represented Sackville at the Halifax Mooseheads Jamboree. For many, this will be their first but certainly not their last time playing under the bright lights of the Scotiabank Centre. If their early years are any indication, these athletes are bound for big things.

[Page 2553]

I ask that all in attendance help me congratulate Sackville's minor hockey community for giving the gift of hockey to the next generation of Olympic athletes and greats.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Hants West.

WOOD, CALVIN: PEOPLE FIRST N.S. AWARD - CONGRATS.

MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD « » : I rise today to share a story that truly warms the heart. Calvin Wood, a proud member of Windsor People First, always has a big smile on his face, and he never passes up the opportunity to have a good conversation.

In 2023, Calvin came to my office looking for help. He wanted to earn his high-school diploma - something he didn't get the chance to finish years ago through no fault of his own. We connected him with the Windsor Adult High School, and I'm proud to say that Calvin graduated on June 27, 2025, while also receiving the Perseverance Award, which couldn't be more fitting.

Speaker, I ask all members to join me in congratulating Calvin, who is a shining example that it's never too late to chase your goals and that hard work really does pay off.

Calvin, we are all so proud of you.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

MILLER, VADM DUNCAN "DUSTY": GULF WAR VET. - RECOG.

LISA LACHANCE « » : I am pleased to rise and honour Duncan "Dusty" Miller, a long-time resident of Halifax Citadel who will join us in the House later today with a group of Gulf War veterans.

At 15, retired Vice Admiral Miller first tried to join the navy but had to wait another year. Once he joined at 16, there was no stopping him. Over a 38-year career, he commanded a minesweeper, a helicopter destroyer, the first Canadian destroyer squadron, and the Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare Centre. He was a defence adviser to the Prime Minister.

[Page 2554]

During the Gulf War, he commanded Canada's naval task group and the 60-ship Allied combat logistics force. He served for three years as head of Canada's East Coast Navy in Halifax, and his last job was chief of staff for the Supreme Allied Commander's NATO headquarters in Virginia. Vice Admiral Miller retired in 2003. He was the honorary colonel for the Cyclone 406 Operational Training Squadron and chair of the National Board of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires.

You might also recognize Duncan from the stage. He has appeared in many Gilbert and Sullivan productions across Canada, and he is a choral singer with Nova Voce. He and his partner, Ann, are ardent supporters of Phoenix youth services and are very engaged hockey grandparents.

I ask all members to join me in acknowledging Duncan Miller's ongoing contributions to community.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Hammonds Plains-Lucasville.

ELIZABETH MANTLEY YOUTH AND REC. ARTS CTR.: OPENING - RECOG.

RICK BURNS « » : Speaker, this summer marked an exciting new chapter for Upper Hammonds Plains, with the official opening of the Elizabeth Mantley Youth Recreation and Art Centre. The centre is housed in the former fire hall that once belonged to Canada's first all-Black volunteer fire department, an institution built by the community, for the community, on land donated by Elizabeth Mantley in the 1960s.

Thanks to the vision and determination of the Upper Hammonds Plains Community Development Association, this historic space has been reclaimed and reimagined. It now serves as a hub for arts, recreation, and youth programming, bridging generations and honouring a powerful legacy of resilience, leadership, and self-determination.

I commend the Upper Hammonds Plain Community Development Association, Doreen Mantley, Gina Jones-Wilson, and all involved in this meaningful project. The Elizabeth Mantley Youth Recreation and Art Centre is more than a building. It is a living testament to the strength of community and a bright future for local youth.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

DNR: COMM. CONCERNS OVER CUTS - RECOG.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, I rise today to bring awareness to the cuts to the Department of Natural Resources. Over the past several days, I have received countless messages and emails from constituents, from my constituency and from other constituencies, of people denouncing these cuts and calling out the dangers to our natural resources if these cuts and restructuring of our Natural Resources department continue.

[Page 2555]

One person - and I'm paraphrasing here - said: Wildlife, science, habitat protection, and biodiversity management require independent oversight, rooted in ecological sustainability, not solely economic land use objectives.

Another person - and I will paraphrase - said: The drastic restructuring cuts to the Department of Natural Resources raise serious questions about how effectively our natural resources are being managed.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Guysborough-Tracadie.

SURETTE, BIANCA: ACADIA UNIV. SCHOLARSHIP - CONGRATS.

HON. GREG MORROW « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Bianca Surette of Sunnyville. This proud graduate of Chedabucto Education Centre/Guysborough Academy's Class of 2025 was awarded the Tory-Bagnall and MacDonald scholarship to Acadia University.

A special presentation was held this past summer at the Guysborough Historical Society, where Bianca was able to celebrate her achievement with family and friends. She has always been a positive student and a role model for her peers. This past fall, Bianca started her studies in nursing at Acadia, a field in which her compassion and commitment will no doubt serve her well.

Her family - especially her parents, Stephanie and Justin, and her grandmother, Emily Borden - and her community are very proud of her accomplishments and look forward to the day when she returns home to start her nursing career.

I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating Bianca Surette on this well-deserved achievement. We wish her every success in the future, in her future studies, and her career in health care.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

KELLER, WADE: RETIREMENT - CONGRATS.

SUZY HANSEN « » : Speaker, I rise today to wish Wade Keller a happy retirement. Wade Keller is the Federal and Atlantic Government Relations person for Labatt Breweries of Canada.

I met Wade while working in community, and he was my contact for Oland Brewery. I wanted to plan a community recognition for folks from the community that was familiar and accessible. Wade, without hesitation, made the space available so that I could have a celebration for them for their outstanding contributions to the north end of Halifax.

[Page 2556]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Eastern Passage.

HORNE FAMILY REUNION: 274^TH ANNIV. - RECOG.

HON. BARBARA ADAMS « » : Speaker, I learned several years ago that my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the first European settler of Eastern Passage, so I am no longer a come-from-away as I once thought.

I rise today to recognize a special gathering that celebrates family heritage and community. On September 20, 2025, the Horne family, from Jacob Horne, held our much-anticipated family reunion in Eastern Passage. With strong historic ties to our province, this year marked the 274^th year since Jacob Horne, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, landed in the great city of Halifax.

This event brought together generations of Horne family members from near and far, three of whom showed up from my Lions Club, and I didn't even realize they were members of my own family. Family reunions like this are more than just social gatherings. They are affirmations of our shared history, our resilience, and the enduring importance of family history. I hope to see them all at next year's family reunion. I ask all members of the Nova Scotia Legislature to join me in recognizing the Horne family.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Antigonish.

GOODLAND, DORIS: INDOOR CDN. TRACK CHAMPION - BEST WISHES

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : Speaker, with a few seconds left, I'd like to give a shout out to my incredible niece, Doris Goodland, who is competing at the Canadian Indoor Track & Field Championships for track this weekend - under 16. Doris is the defending 60 metre champion.

She's an incredible person. She's dedicated. She's diligent. She has a lot more great qualities than I do. She's a wonderful big sister to Betty, Audrey, and Jack, and we love her to pieces.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The time allotted for Statements by Members has expired.

[12:00 p.m.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The time for Statements by Members has elapsed.

[Page 2557]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

DHW: BUDGET CUTS TO WOMEN'S HEALTH - ADDRESS

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : When times get tough, we are often asked - or forced - to sacrifice, and we know that it is usually women who end up making the biggest sacrifices. People gave this government the benefit of the doubt when they said they'd fix health care, but people aren't seeing the progress they were promised.

Today we heard the heartbreaking story of Cassidy Horne, who lost her baby after multiple delays getting the ultrasound care she desperately needed. No one should have to go through this horrific experience.

What is this government doing to ensure that no other mother has to go through Cassidy's heartbreak?

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : Speaker, I did hear about this tragic loss yesterday. I want to extend my deepest sympathy to the parents and grandparents and the broader family.

I cannot speak directly about individual cases, but I can assure the family that there will be an extensive review of the situation to understand what happened through the quality-review process. I have to trust that process. We will continue to monitor the situation.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Women and gender-diverse Nova Scotians are not getting the health care they deserve. Only 7 percent of the health research in Canada is focused on women. The IWK Foundation is leading the way in advocating for change at the national and provincial levels. This government's response: They are cutting 20 percent from a grant to the IWK, limiting research of women's health in this province. This is shameful.

When women's health gets so little support, how can the minister justify a cut to this important research?

MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : We are committed to improving health for all people in Nova Scotia, but we do know that there is a particular focus on women's health in our province. As you know, we recently announced the Menopause Centre of Excellence. We are working to support women who are in midlife and beyond.

[Page 2558]

There is work that's happening across prevention, early diagnosis, and screening. We are looking at specialty clinics as well. We've increased the number of gynecological services across the province. We have a number of partners who are doing research who are informing practice - experts in the field.

We are committed. We are working with the IWK. We have extensively reviewed the survey. This will take some time and it will take consultation, but we are committed to women's health in this province.

THE SPEAKER « » : Before I recognize the honourable Leader of the Official Opposition, I ask that people speak through me to whomever they are asking the questions of and not directly to the person, just like if you are responding to a question, respond to me instead of the person who you are asking for.

The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Thank you, Speaker. With respect, that Menopause Centre of Excellence was promised years ago. Announcements aren't care.

The research funding for the IWK was cut by 20 percent. Women are left waiting. They are waiting too long for prenatal care and ultrasounds. There are not enough midwives to meet the need. They are waiting months or years for endometriosis treatment, menopause support, and mental health services. They are waiting for better cancer screenings, and waiting for access to free birth control like their peers across the country.

Women are paying for this government's delay with their health. If the government takes these concerns seriously, why are we seeing so little progress?

MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : As I've said before, we do take this issue of women's health very seriously. The Menopause Centre of Excellence was promised a year ago, and we have worked extensively with the Menopause Society of Nova Scotia, as well as experts in the field. This Menopause Centre of Excellence will not only include clinical care but incorporate education for individuals as well as clinicians. It will also involve research. These things need to build. We are committed to that.

There have been a number of improvements in terms of the ability to access gynecological care. The teams we have invested in from a primary care perspective will also assist women in getting the care they need in community in a more timely fashion.

There are a number of initiatives that are under way, and I look forward to having a fuller conversation in Estimates.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Liberal Party.

[Page 2559]

ECC: NATURAL RESOURCE PROTECTION PROMISES - ADDRESS

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : Under the Canada-Nova Scotia Nature Agreement that the government signed, the Province committed to protecting 15 percent by next month, March 2026. As recently as October, the former Minister of Natural Resources publicly said the government was committed to meeting that target. This matters because Nova Scotia is already facing serious economic challenges, and federal funding is critical. If the Province fails to meet this commitment, that money could be taken back, leaving us with fewer resources at a time when every dollar counts.

My question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change: Is Nova Scotia on track to meet the 15 percent land protection target by next month?

HON. TIMOTHY HALMAN » : Very much so, Nova Scotia has a very strong, collaborative protected-areas strategy. We've had that strategy since December 2023. When I assumed office in 2021, 12.6 percent of Nova Scotia was protected. We're currently at 14.55 percent protection. We've protected thousands of hectares, using traditional conservation practices, using private land trusts, the Nova Scotia Nature Trust, using things like other effective conservation measures.

IAIN RANKIN « » : That's a new number that I've heard in this House, and that is going to be because of different types of accounting that we're not used to. When this prior government came in, there was less than 10 percent, and then there was above 13 percent of real, fully protected wilderness areas, provincial parks, and nature reserves, not counting picnic parks and other areas that aren't the most sensitive areas that need protecting.

Will the minister truly protect 15 percent, for which he's going to need to protect 200,000 acres in the next month, to secure the funding needed?

TIMOTHY HALMAN « » : The former Premier and former Minister of Environment is confusing a number of timelines. There is no timeline in that Canada-Nova Scotia Nature Agreement. The federal government cannot impose timelines on a Province, especially related to natural resources. Natural resources belong to the domain of the provinces.

The facts are: We have established in the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy, released in December 2023, an interim target of 15 percent. I'm confident that we can achieve that target by the end of 2026.

IAIN RANKIN « » : I was at that announcement in 2023, and there was no mention of changing the focus away from wilderness areas. The areas that are truly sensitive need protecting and not counting other areas that aren't the areas that need protecting. That is a new shift that has never been seen in this province before.

There's also a commitment to protect 20 percent, a legislative commitment for this Province to protect 20 percent by 2030. Is the minister changing the accounting practices to meet that commitment? People are worried about this. It's people who care about the environment. The only tax increases in this budget are for people who have chosen to drive EVs or hybrids or not cut all the trees on their land. People are worried.

[Page 2560]

Is the minister changing the accounting to meet his legislative goals?

TIMOTHY HALMAN « » : We have, as a government, been clear through the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy that land and water conservation requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. One of the approaches used not only by Nova Scotia but all provinces and territories when it comes to land and water conservation is what's known as "other effective conservation measures." It's in the Collaborative Protected Areas Strategy that we released in 2023.

We are always taking a balanced approach. In a time of responsible resource development, we know it's important to continue to conserve and preserve land, but it's also very important to build up the economy for future generations.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

DOJ: NDA BAN - ADDRESS

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : For years, survivors have been clear: We need to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual assault and harassment cases. These agreements protect perpetrators. Other provinces, states, institutions, and countries are moving forward, while this government has stood still for five years and four Justice Ministers - while this government, which initially promised to protect victims, has once again broken a promise.

When asked, the three previous Justice Ministers all dodged and delayed supporting the women of this province.

I'd like to ask the current Minister of Justice if he can finally answer the question: When will this government ban the use of non-disclosure agreements?

HON. SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : Supporting survivors with sensitivity and respect remains our priority. Non-disclosure agreements should never be used to silence victims. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada is considering the issue of NDAs. They are now developing model legislation, expected later this year. As soon as that model legislation is released, the department will review that model legislation, and we'll bring back something sometime after that.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Years ago, 91 percent of members of the Canadian Bar Association said that we should do this. This government did its own jurisdictional scan. Women have come to this Legislature and told their stories. They have talked about how NDAs silenced them, taking away their right to speak about their own experiences, even to their family or a therapist. Wendy Carroll and Erin Casey, who were both released from the NDAs this year, told their story again today on CBC Radio. The news is full of terrible men doing terrible things, and NDAs are the main tool used to keep victims silent and abusers at large. More survivors are pushed into signing these agreements while this government delays.

[Page 2561]

When will this government take these concerns seriously and act?

SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : We, too, take this very seriously. As I said, no victims should be unable to tell their story and be silenced because of NDAs. We continue to stay connected to national conversations on this issue, including discussions with other provinces. As dialogue around NDAs and victim protection continues to evolve, we will work with other provinces to bring back legislation so that we have consistency across this country when dealing with NDAs.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Leader of the Official Opposition.

DPW: RURAL TRANSIT CUTS - EXPLAIN

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Nova Scotians know that it's expensive to get around our province, especially in rural communities, so it's shocking to see this government cut both Community Transportation Assistance Program and the Public Transit Assistance Program, which help fund rural transit. When funding for these programs was announced in 2023, the General Manager of Trans County Transportation said, "Without the support of the Province of Nova Scotia, we would not be able to maintain our mission of operating a safe, affordable and accessible alternate transportation service to our local rural communities."

My question to the minister is: How does cutting rural transit defend Nova Scotians?

HON. FRED TILLEY » : We recognize the importance of rural transit. We recognize the importance of transit across Nova Scotia. The cut that the member refers to is a 20 percent cut, but we feel that we're still able to deliver our mandate. We've contributed over a half a billion dollars to roads. We've contributed over $2.5 billion in the last five years to building up roads in this province. Community transportation - we're working with our partners to ensure that they stay active and are able to deliver their programming.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : With respect, funding roads is not funding public transportation, something which people need across this province. This government has also made massive cuts - in fact, has eliminated the Student Transit Pass Program in HRM. The funding item left only gets them through the end of this year, when they have been told it will be cancelled.

[Page 2562]

[12:15 p.m.]

This is an innovative program that lets students ride the bus for free, reducing traffic, encouraging independence, offering stable funding to transit when HRM is currently considering service cuts to this vital service, and building a generation of transit users. The total cost to the province for this program was $1.2 million. That won't even balance the budget or pay for the staff in the Premier's Office. What is the rationale of cutting this program?

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE » : Obviously when you make decisions like this, they're tough and they do weigh on you. The truth is that the program is not cut. What we've done instead of sending $1.2 million to HRM for every single student in Halifax, is we send $600,000 to OSD to ensure the kids who need it the most have access to the bus passes.

The truth is that we didn't know how many kids were using bus passes. We had no information from HRM on that, but now we know through the department OSD that the kids and families who need it the most will get bus passes.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

SLTC: CARE HOME BUDGET CUTS - ADDRESS

HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : On Monday, the government introduced its budget with some incredibly harsh cuts. As we've been saying, it didn't have to be this way, but the government has made irresponsible financial decisions, and now the most vulnerable among us are experiencing the impacts of this government's financial mismanagement. We're hearing that long-term-care homes across the province may see their budgets decreased. This would mean direct impacts to frontline staff that support people.

My question to the Minister of Seniors and Long-term Care is: Is there a plan to cut the budgets of long-term care facilities?

HON. BARBARA ADAMS « » : Thank you to the member for this important question. We know that these are very difficult times and I am appreciative of having the opportunity to speak directly to the sector, so thank you very much.

[Page 2563]

There are difficult decisions that are being made, but it is not a cut to the budget. It is a cut to some of the staffing in there that is going to be used through attrition and through retirement, and we are working with all of our long-term care providers. There is a sector call tomorrow to speak to all of them to help them understand and work through the process to minimize the disruption to their programs.

DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : Speaker, any cut to long-term care facilities is going to have a huge effect on these homes. This is going to mean fewer staff, fewer resources for residents, and deteriorating conditions. The Premier has stood in this House and said that this government's cuts will not impact frontline services. Long-term care homes are frontline services, and now we're finding out their staff is being cut.

My question through you, Speaker, is: How can the government say that these cuts won't affect frontline services when you're cutting long-term care budgets across the province?

BARBARA ADAMS « » : The workers in long-term care do incredible work. I will remind the member that when he was in government, right before we took over there were 500 nursing home beds closed in province. We have opened those 500 and added an additional 1,000 beds to this province.

We have the highest staffing level in the country, and we have what's called protected envelopes of care where we are protecting the frontline staff, which includes the 4.1 hours of care that our government put in place. We are committed to that. We are going to work to minimize the disruption, and we know that our service providers are willing partners to work with us through that and we're going to continue to expand. I'm going to be opening up seven more nursing homes including starting construction on the member's very own nursing home.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

CCTH: HOPE BLOOMS PROGRAM CUTS - EXPLAIN

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage.

In this budget, this government is literally taking food out of the mouths of Nova Scotians. Hope Blooms in the north end of Halifax builds community resilience, supports youth entrepreneurship, but most of all, they feed people. Their urban farm grows more than 4,000 pounds of food each year and gives it to families who need it for free. This government is cutting their funding in half.

Where does the government want hungry families to turn to when they're cutting the groups that are helping them?

[Page 2564]

HON. DAVE RITCEY » : We understand grocery bills are going up. That's hard on families. We understand that. These decisions that we've made are tough on people and tough on organizations. We'll continue to invest in the food program.

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : Continuing to invest and then cutting the budget by half does not make any sense. Hope Blooms should be grateful for the money they're getting, I guess. But guess what? Half of their ability to serve people is gone.

These cuts will leave people hungry right across the province. In Dartmouth North, the Mobile Food Market has heard that their funding will be cut by 20 percent. You know who depends on them for fresh food? Thirty-five partner organizations, five weekly markets, eleven schools, and three seniors' residences in communities across HRM, including Clayton Park West, Cole Harbour, Dartmouth East, Eastern Shore, Musquodoboit Valley, and Sackville.

With the cost of groceries expected to go up a thousand dollars . . .

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

There is no question, but if the minister would like to . . .

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : I think he knows what the question is.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. I asked the member.

The honourable Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage.

DAVE RITCEY « » : Speaker, I would like to talk about the Feeding Communities Fund. This is the one-time funding program created from the proceeds of U.S. alcohol sales - $2 million available for identified organizations - $2 million in application-based funding. Over 350 applications have come in.

I'd also like to add local food-security initiatives helping Nova Scotians: $422,000 for the Nourishing Communities Food Coupon Program; $74,000 to Shelburne County Youth Health and Support Association to create a sustainable food hub.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

GAD: RURAL TOURISM ECON. IMPACTS - EXPLAIN

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : Speaker, it's undeniable: Tourism has a major impact on this province's economic development. It generates $3.5 billion every single year, and much of it goes directly to rural communities. Yet this government is cutting support to the tourism industry - slashing Taste of Nova Scotia's program budget in half and closing visitor information centres.

[Page 2565]

I ask the Minister of Growth and Development: Why is this government taking economic opportunities away from Nova Scotians in rural communities?

HON. COLTON LEBLANC » : We certainly know that the decisions that are undertaken in this budget are having real impacts on Nova Scotians. They're not taken lightly. With respect to tourism, we know the impact of the tourism sector on our province's economy from one end of the province to the other, from Yarmouth to Cape Breton.

With respect to changes in visitor information centres, we know that the way people travel is different than before. But that said, we will remain committed to supporting the 40 community visitor information centres across Nova Scotia.

I need not remind the NDP what happens when they gutted a vital, important transportation link between Nova Scotia and United States. We're still rebuilding from that.

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : People want to build a good life in Nova Scotia, but unemployment rates are high in rural communities. People want jobs at home, but often they just don't exist. Now this government is cutting 900 public sector jobs and many of those are in rural areas.

How does this government expect Nova Scotians to build a good life in rural communities without jobs?

COLTON LEBLANC « » : Perhaps I could ask the member what the unemployment rate was in Yarmouth and many other parts of the province when her party gutted the CAT ferry service between Nova Scotia and the United States.

Despite the challenges . . . (Interruptions)

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. You might want to listen to what the minister has to say before we start heckling.

The honourable Minister of Growth and Development.

COLTON LEBLANC « » : Speaker, I know that we are navigating very difficult times, not only here in Nova Scotia but right across this country. Nova Scotians can be reassured that they have a government that is focused on building on the foundations that we have today. The opportunities in front of us are big.

[Page 2566]

I know we have the best people in the world. We have the natural resources, we have the geography, and we have the climate to build upon our natural resources to create long-term sustainability for this province and to create stronger communities and good-paying jobs for the future.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenberg West.

PREM.: CABINET CONFIDENTIALITY RESTRICTIONS - ADDRESS

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Earlier this week when I asked about the independence of our justice system, I believe I heard the Premier say, "I dare you to say that out there," implying that I am hiding behind parliamentary privilege.

Let me be clear: I am not hiding behind parliamentary privilege. I am merely asking questions that deserve answers, but I am constrained by strict legal rules - Cabinet confidentiality and client-solicitor privilege - that prevent me from speaking within this House and outside the walls. I cannot waive those obligations. Only the Premier and his Cabinet can.

My question to the Premier is this: If he wants these matters discussed outside this Legislature, will he waive Cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege so I can speak freely?

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Justice.

HON. SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : One of the reasons that we have those restrictions and those rules on Cabinet Ministers in the parliamentary democracies is that when you go into Cabinet, you should be able to speak freely and opening, defending the people of your province or of the jurisdiction you're representing, both provincially and federally.

Cabinet confidentiality is a core principle of parliamentary democracy, and we stand behind that principle, Speaker.

BECKY DRUHAN « » : I am merely responding to the Premier's invitation, and the Premier didn't answer the question.

Earlier this week he suggested that I should speak outside this House. I am prepared to do that, but outside this Legislature, Cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege prevent me from making full public disclosure. In fact, even the Justice Minister's own Cabinet colleagues are not often privy to the information the Attorney General has access to. The Premier cannot demand public disclosure and at the same time maintain legal barriers that prevent it.

[Page 2567]

I will ask again: Will the Premier waive the Cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege that prevent me from speaking outside this House - yes or no?

SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : I thank the member for her question. The answer is no.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

ANSA: BUDGET CUTS FOR BLACK NOVA SCOTIANS - ADDRESS

SUZY HANSEN « » : Speaker, we have a lot of questions about this budget and what it means for Black and African Nova Scotians. The way I see it, there is a 100-percent cut for promoting leadership and help for African Nova Scotians, a 100-percent cut in the Africentric Summer Scholar program for African Nova Scotian youth, a 75-percent cut to community resource support, and 50-percent cuts to African Heritage Month Proclamation, African Culture Activities, and the Arts Equity Funding Initiative.

Can the Minister of African Nova Scotia Affairs confirm that these cuts are happening?

HON. TWILA GROSSE « » : Decisions regarding program adjustments and reductions are made by departments. They are based on operational priorities and available resources. Our focus at African Nova Scotian Affairs is to continue to work with partners and communities to advance shared priorities and ensure supports remain aligned with community needs.

[12:30 p.m.]

SUZY HANSEN « » : The minister is the Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs and so I would hope that they talked to the minister before they decided to make these cuts to those really integral programs.

This is exactly why we need an open and transparent budget process, because the way these cuts are laid out, it's causing stress and worry in our communities. These are programs that Black and African Nova Scotians depend on for our youth, our families, and our communities.

My question is to the minister: Will the minister appear before Estimates to explain these changes in detail?

TWILA GROSSE « » : We understand the changes to the programs. I understand the impact that they will have, but again, as Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs, we will work with communities and partners and see how we can move forward together.

[Page 2568]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

DMA: MUN. INFRASTRUCTURE CUTS - EXPLAIN

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Nova Scotian families count on safe roads, a working sewer system, and protection from flooding in their communities, but this government just cut $17.5 million from municipalities, including $15 million from a program to fix sewers and manage storm water.

Why is this government taking money away from the basic infrastructure that Nova Scotians rely on to stay safe?

HON. JOHN A. MACDONALD: We are dealing with tough economic times and every department has been asked to review the programs. We took a determined look at our programs for long-term sustainability and that's why we are continuing to leverage our relationships with the federal to make smart investments in the municipality and help them drive the province forward.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Unfortunately these cuts are going to have serious effects on residents as well as municipalities to deliver services. This government has a track record of leaving municipalities behind. They already abandoned the Coastal Protection Act, leaving communities to fend for themselves. Now they have eliminated funding for climate adaptation and projects needed to meet the Accessibility Act.

How can this government expect municipalities to protect people from floods and make public spaces accessible after cutting the very funding that pays for it?

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

HON. TIMOTHY HALMAN « » : Speaker, I reject entirely the premise of that supplementary question from the member. Nova Scotia continues to have a fully funded climate change plan. We continue to work with our municipalities in providing resources for them to ensure residents do not build in unsafe areas along the coastline.

I will remind this House that Nova Scotia is ranked third in Canada, just after Quebec and British Columbia, for our response to climate change.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Liberal Party.

EECD: NEW TIMBERLEA SCHOOL - UPDATE

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : My question is for the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development. We had a school approved for the Timberlea area and I know that the steering committee has met. There are preliminary plans that have been made public. I appreciate the progress, but parents are eager to see shovels in the ground. We have Ridgecliff Middle School bursting at the seams, and we have overcrowding that I met with teachers to talk about.

[Page 2569]

I want to ask for a progress update from the minister: When will we see shovels in the ground? What's the timeline looking like? What will we do in the interim period? We know it takes years to build a big school like that, to deal with the congestion at Ridgecliff Middle School.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : I know the honourable member has been a huge advocate for this school for quite some time. As the member stated, the school advisory committee has been pulled together. They just had their third meeting yesterday. They have completed designs. We can have that conversation offline, and we can get you the information.

IAIN RANKIN « » : I really appreciate that answer. Within that commitment is building child care spaces - 104 spaces onsite. We did get some confirmation that there would be plans to look at a modular unit there. I notice in the budget there is a line item for modular units to set up in school locations.

I'd like to know, from the minister, if there are plans to get that expedited so we don't have to wait, given the long wait-list of parents waiting for child care spaces in the community. When will that modular unit be placed in Timberlea for those spaces?

BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : The advisory committee saw the plans yesterday, just so you know. We're working on construction documents that will go out soon. Again, this is a priority for the department, whether it's the child care facility or the school. I'll make sure that the member has updated documents as soon as possible.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

EECD: DAILY CHILD CARE COSTS - ADDRESS

PAUL WOZNEY « » : It's been a rough couple of days when it comes to child care math in this House, Speaker. When the minister claims parents spend an average of $12 per day on child care, he's including kids in the pre-Primary program. It's a phenomenal program, but it's been around longer than his government has.

Before the minister pats himself on the back too hard, can he tell the House how much parents whose children cannot attend pre-Primary are paying for child care on a daily basis?

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : It's a frustrating thing to hear the member continuing to discount pre-Primary and before and after school programs as not being child care. Before that program existed in every part of this province, parents were having to pay for child care. Over 32,000 children have gone through the pre-Primary system. That's an immense amount of savings in the pockets of Nova Scotians.

[Page 2570]

PAUL WOZNEY « » : I guess we're also having vocabulary problems on top of math. I believe I recognized that pre-Primary is a phenomenal program. (Interruption)

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please.

Once I say Order, microphones are off. Nobody speaks until I say your constituency. Nothing here so far has been out of order, and I will not call anything out of order if anybody wants to bring this up afterwards. Your clock has been put back. We do watch time here. I don't know if you notice they're everywhere.

The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : The pre-Primary programs that I called phenomenal are unquestionably important, but the minister's claims about daycare fees don't match the reality of what parents with young kids in Nova Scotia pay every day.

The minister is taking credit for something he didn't do to give himself a better number, but the parents I talk to every day aren't seeing it.

What does the minister have to say to parents who continue to pay $20 to $30 every day for child care in this province?

BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Listen, Speaker, it wasn't the first time that someone has told me that I don't have a rich vocabulary, but at least I don't have a comprehension - I have ability to understand problems. So this is what I will say, I will tell you this: To assert that those kids aren't receiving child care in pre-Primary is just factually incorrect.

What I will tell those parents is that we continue to work within the framework of the agreement. We've reduced child care fees 50 percent right across this province. The average child care fee now is $12.13. We are going to meet our 9,500 spaces. To the people working in those sectors, what I can say is we appreciate you. We've given them raises, and as a matter of fact, we've given them pension and benefits like no one else has done.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

The honourable member for Halifax Armdale.

DHW: OHPR CUTS - EXPLAIN

ROD WILSON « » : Like many Nova Scotians, I was shocked to see the government has cut from the budget the Office of Healthcare Professionals Recruitment. As everyone in this Legislature knows, including the minister, Nova Scotia has a severe shortage of health care professionals, and it's only going to get worse in the next five years with retirements.

[Page 2571]

This office helps new health care workers find a home, child care, schools, and a connection in the community, and it's done so well in rural areas. How does this government expect to recruit health care professionals when they're cutting the recruitment budget 20 percent?

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : The reductions that were shown the other day are actually a reduction in the discretionary grants, and we did look at the community recruitment funding. Over the last number of years, there's been a $2 million fund that we have used to support communities across the province, doing things like creating websites, pamphlets, promotional material for their areas.

After that foundational investment, we are now moving to a maintenance phase and we feel that this is an adequate amount of money in order to support ongoing community development for recruitment and retention. We'll work with those partners to understand, it was a grant-based program. Some people had several grants in a year. Others have only gotten one. But it really has been around investments that will create foundations for them to move forward in their recruitment efforts.

ROD WILSON « » : We learned when the Liberal government went to one health body, and they took recruitment out of the communities, it was a huge deficit. When it came back to the communities, communities like Yarmouth took ownership and were very, very successful in meeting housing needs, home care. Why is the minister cutting back communities' abilities to support new recruits and keep them?

MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : There is operational funding that still exists, and we do know that across the province there's different ways in which communities recruit. Sometimes municipalities, as an example, have a recruiter. Nova Scotia Health is still heavily involved in the recruitment and settlement work that's happening across this province. They have paid employees and teams to do that.

This is around community-based organizations. We've been working with them for several years, looking at ways in which we can support them in creating a foundation for promotional materials, as an example, or engagement activities. There is an opportunity now with that foundational investment, for folks to work together, as they have been and maturing over the last number of years.

Our recruitment has been excellent. We have a net new 570 positions since 2021 and we are very grateful to our partners. We'll continue to work with community.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. That's twice now, minister.

[Page 2572]

The honourable member for Cumberland North.

FTB: RESTRUCTURING FUND - EXPLAIN

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : My question is for the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board. This week has been a difficult week, and I'm sure it will continue as many Nova Scotians have found out that they've had job losses. This budget has in it about half a billion dollars set aside for what some would call a slush fund, and the line on the budget is called Restructuring Costs.

This year, I should add, it's over that. It's $651,397,000 - over half a billion dollars. Could the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board explain to us why there is such a large amount of money needed in this slush fund? Did they consider trying to use some of that money to help reduce front line workers losing jobs in the province?

[12:45 p.m.]

HON. JOHN LOHR « » : The restructuring fund that shows up in budgets every year - and has been in budgets every year going back as far as I think anyone here in this House can remember - is a provision for government priorities not yet fully formulated. It's a provision for potential things that we don't want to be candid about, like potential wage settlements or changes. There are many different things in that restructuring fund. That is just a place where the government sets aside money that we know we may spend, but we haven't fully determined - there are projects not fully yet formulated. It's not a slush fund, I can assure the member.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : It's a lot of money to not have accountability for. It's not allocated to a department, so in Estimates, there's over half a billion dollars that technically goes unaccounted for. I do think the people of Nova Scotia deserve to know where that money is being spent, considering the number of job losses that we are faced with. Last night I learned that in the Department of Growth and Development, the senior managers are getting a significant wage, yet there are frontline workers who are there to help our businesses being cut.

Can the minister let us know: Did they look at cuts in the Premier's Office? Have they taken any job losses, or any other senior management?

JOHN LOHR « » : I just want to assure the member that over time, as budgets get finalized, as we have the final, actual numbers, these numbers in restructuring show up in budget lines. I just want to assure the member that there's nothing hidden about it. As projects develop, as things develop, these numbers do show up.

As far as what we're asking ourselves in departments, yes, this applies to every department. I want to say for the benefit of the member that the reality is that this is a budget that is investing in Nova Scotia. We have a record capital investment in our province and a record investment in health care. We're continuing to invest in housing, we're continuing to invest in affordability - all of those things. Yes, there are cuts in the budget . . .

[Page 2573]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

DAE: N.S. GRAD. SCHOLARSHIP PROG. CUTS - ADDRESS

LISA LACHANCE « » : This government has cut the funding for the Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship program to zero. This program funded vital research at Nova Scotia universities - like the ones in my constituency, Antigonish, Kings South, CBRM, Truro - research about government priorities like health care, geology, and ocean technology. The government loves to say they support innovation, but where do you think it's going to come from if they don't fund it?

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : We continue to invest in our universities. We just signed a bilateral agreement with them. At a time when there's very little money and very few resources, we were still able to give them a bump to their operational costs. We appreciate everything our universities do and we'll continue to support them.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Graduate students are a valuable part of the university community. They do research, they teach, and they build a life here. Many of them are part way through projects and will have to abandon them without further funding. With tuition climbing on top of the high cost of living, more and more students will choose not to continue their education, or they'll go somewhere else that will fund them.

At a time when universities are facing unprecedented threats from funding cuts, why would this government drive graduate students away?

BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : In a time when resources are tight and we have to be very careful with how we spend our money, we're still giving an increase to the operational costs of universities, because we appreciate everything they do. They are an integral part of this province, and I've said it here before: When you think of Nova Scotia, there are many things you think about - the Sambro Island Lighthouse and other things like that - but you also think of our universities. We have some of the top universities in all of Canada. I will continue to support them in every way I can.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. The time allotted for Oral Questions Put by Members to Ministers has expired.

The honourable Government House Leader.

[Page 2574]

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call the order of business Government Motions.

GOVERNMENT MOTIONS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, I move that you now leave the Chair and the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole House on Supply.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

SUZY HANSEN « » : Wow, what a whirlwind of a week, I'm telling you - lots of calls, lots of emails, lots of things happening. I'd like to say this is something of a positive nature. We all have our own homes that we have to manage. We understand there are things that sometimes we have to go without.

When we think of a province going without, for many communities it's actually super detrimental and impactful, not just for now but for generations to come. I want to talk today about the lives, struggles, and the enduring spirit of African Nova Scotians, a community deeply woven into the fabric of Nova Scotia's history, Canadian history, yet often left on the margins of its story.

As we start our year on the right foot with all the celebrations, galas and presentations in our Black communities, we should all have a good grasp on some of the history in each of our respective constituencies. As you know, there are 52 Black communities across this province, and I'm pretty sure one or two of them touch each and every one of our ridings. There's a deep and rich history that we all should know, especially when it comes to African Nova Scotian history in this province.

African Nova Scotians are not strangers to the soil of this province. Their roots stretch back over 400 years, to the early 1600s when Mathieu Da Costa arrived as an interpreter for French settlers. There were Loyalists, refugees, freedom seekers, and pioneers - people who built lives with their hands and hearts when the world did not always recognize their humanity.

Today we must look beyond history books and see the lived reality of this community as it stands - a story of pain, perseverance, and pride. To understand the struggles of African Nova Scotians today, we must understand how the past built the present. When Black Loyalists arrived in the 1780s, they were promised freedom land - freedom, land, and opportunity. Instead, many were given poor, infertile land in segregated settlements, like Birchtown and Preston. Meanwhile, white Loyalists received fertile farmland and government support.

[Page 2575]

This pattern of inequality wasn't an accident; it was by design. These early beginnings planted seeds of generational disadvantage, legal discrimination, limited access to jobs, education, and housing.

African Nova Scotians built their own schools, churches, and mutual-aid societies, not only from necessity but from strength, because we couldn't depend on society to do it for us because we, as most folks know in this room, weren't treated the same.

Then came the destruction of Africville, one of the most heartbreaking chapters in Nova Scotia's history. Africville was a proud Black community on the shores of Halifax, built by families who faced exclusion elsewhere. It was rich in culture and connection, even as the City denied it running water, paved roads, and basic services. In the 1960s, under the guise of urban renewal, the City bulldozed Africville, displacing its residents and destroying generations of memory.

The loss of Africville was not just the loss of homes; it was a loss of belonging, heritage, and trust. For many African Nova Scotians, that pain still echoes today. We've talked about Eddie Carvery in this House since we've been sitting and how he protested actively for over 50 years. That was the pain that echoes today in our struggle.

Today, the African Nova Scotian community continues to face systemic barriers - barriers that are not as visible as bulldozers yet just as heavy. They face economic inequality. Many African Nova Scotians live in neighbourhoods that have been historically under-resourced and economically isolated. Unemployment rates remain higher in historically Black communities, and intergenerational poverty continues because historical wealth-building opportunities were denied and are still denied to this day.

Education: Black students still face inequities in the school system, from under-representation in advanced classes to over-representation in disciplinary action. It's not about a lack of intelligence - because we are Black brilliance - or drive. It's about a system that too often fails to recognize Black potential and brilliance.

Systemic Racism: I talk about this a lot in this House. From hiring biases to over policing, racism - both overt and subtle - continues to shape the daily lives of African Nova Scotians. The stories of being followed in stores, pulled over for no reason, or hearing racial slurs are all too common. Racism here doesn't always shout. Sometimes it whispers in policies, decisions, and opportunities denied, and what we've seen in this Budget is a lot of whispers of those particular things.

Representation and Identity: There's a lot of struggle. There's also a struggle for recognition, and I've talked about that. Even within Canada's broader Black identity, African Nova Scotians often feel distinct from newer Black immigrant communities. Their lineage is born here in the Maritimes. They're not guests in this land. They are founders, yet their stories are still untold and undervalued.

[Page 2576]

I want to remind folks in this room that my ancestors were stolen. They weren't brought over here because they were looking for a better life. A lot of folks were brought here because they were stolen from their own country, so I want us to not forget that, amongst all of that hardship, we were founders, yet our stories are still under told and undervalued.

How does it feel to live with these struggles? I hear this every day from folks in my community: folks who send me messages, folks who just tell me thank you for doing the work that you are doing. How do you live with these struggles to carry this history in your soul?

It feels like exhaustion because every step forward often comes with resistance. Carrying this burden is not easy but necessary, and we heard about that when we talked about those giants the other day. They knew that there was a burden, but they carried it, and they carried it well. They brought people with them and lifted them up because it was necessary.

It feels like anger - not from hate but from centuries of being unheard, disrespected, and unseen. Once again, I'm wondering where we were heard and seen in this Budget when these cuts came.

It feels like sadness for the elders who have worked so hard for equality but still see the same battles, and it feels like hope because through all the pain, the spirit or resilience has never been broken. If nothing else, it strengthens us.

I want to say that, amongst all these cuts that are happening, I have heard and seen many stories from folks across this province who talk about the hope, the resilience, and how we will continue to do the work that we do because this is what we do for our people. African Nova Scotians are proud of who they are. Their music, their faith, their celebrations like Emancipation Day, and their communities - North Preston, Beechville, East Preston, Cherrybrook, Whitney Pier - they all stand as living testaments to strength and endurance.

[1:00 p.m.]

There's a deep sense of pride in ancestors who built something from nothing, and there's love: a love of culture, of church, of each other. That love has carried people through centuries of struggle and continues to drive us today. Despite the obstacles, African Nova Scotians continue to lead, create, and inspire. They are our educators, activists, artists, and public leaders who redefine what it means to be Black and Nova Scotian. They organize community programs, celebrate heritage through events like the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia and like the Africville Museum and they work tirelessly to preserve their language, the arts, and the history.

[Page 2577]

Young African Nova Scotians are reclaiming their narratives and demanding that Black history be taught, that representation be real, and that equality be more than a word. That strength of this community is not just in surviving oppression. It's in transforming that pain into purpose.

Today and throughout this month and any other time, when we speak about the struggles and feelings of African Nova Scotians, let us remember that this is not just a story of suffering. It's a story of survival. It's a reminder that progress is not a gift that society bestows; it's a fight that people win. To honour our communities, our Black people, it means to listen deeply, to act justly, and to carry forward their legacy with respect. I say this to all my Black communities because I know we will be feeling these effects for generations to come.

We must commit to dismantling these structures that continue to hold people back, to amplify our Black voices, and to celebrate in the richness of African Nova Scotian history not just in February but every day. We need to honour our communities, our Black people. People in this room, we need to understand that it means to listen deeply, to act justly, and to carry forward their legacy with respect - not just with words but with actions. A society that values its Black citizens equally is a society that values its humanity fully.

May we all continue to learn, to listen, and to live with empathy. May we walk the path of Africville in memory. May we learn from those stories. May we listen to those elders who have told us their struggle, who have gone through so much just to get us to where we are today. May we listen to our students in the halls of our schools with awareness as they celebrate not just today but every other day of their lives in their Blackness, in their brilliance. May we listen with awareness because the future of Nova Scotia depends upon it. It is with this that we all must unite.

Speaker, it has been a hard time having to come forward and talk about these struggles of the people in Nova Scotia of African descent, who are of African Nova Scotian descent, who are Black people, who have gone through struggles, whether it be when they got here or when they had been here. It's hard to talk about the feelings of people and their struggles as we stand here, and we talk about cutting the budget that will affect those communities that I hold dear. It's really hard to stand here and say that it's just because of attrition, and there are other options to gain this funding through the budget.

African Nova Scotians have felt left out for a long, long time. We see some representation, but we also need to hear and feel those actions from this House and from the system which was not designed for us. We know that this system in which we work never had anyone that looked like me help make those decisions - let it be a Black person or let it be a woman. We have to do better as Nova Scotians, as legislators in this House, to show all Nova Scotians that we hear them, that we recognize them, and that the struggle doesn't have to continue. That is our job as legislators in this House.

[Page 2578]

I hear from folks across this province from tip to tip, as my colleague will say. I want to be able to let them know that we are doing good work here and that I believe the way that the work is happening is to the betterment of all of our communities. It's unfortunate that my feelings of this are still not that, and we all know in this room that we have a role to play.

Like I said, there are 52 Black communities in Nova Scotia, and I am pretty sure there is a Black community in each and every one of our constituencies, and if there isn't, there's one close by. We deserve, as Black people, to be heard and to be seen and to have our voices represented here in this House.

I want to implore all members in this House that when you receive a letter, when you receive an email, when you receive a visit or a phone call from someone from our Black communities who, as I've stated, have gone through this struggle, who have had over 400 years of perseverance and survival, please listen because we are in a day and time now where folks are done. They are fed up. They're tired and exhausted, as I said. We want a government and people who represent us to do the work for all Nova Scotians, which include African Nova Scotians.

Speaker, the story is not over. It's still being written right here, right now by each and every one of us, and every African Nova Scotian who refuses to be invisible. I would like to thank all the African Nova Scotian communities for being that voice and, as well, for trusting me to be a voice for you here in this House.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : I rise to speak on Supply, on this budget. By virtue of my portfolio as critic for Advanced Education, like many other members of the House, I have had the pleasure and opportunity to liaise regularly with representatives from Students Nova Scotia. I have seen in the social media feed for Students Nova Scotia a number of photographs that demonstrate that folks from the government side of the House have taken meetings with this group to hear about their advocacy heading into the budget, proposing measures fiscally that would serve to better support post-secondary students in this province and help make getting a degree or diploma a more realistic and a more cost-effective goal.

In meeting with these students, and just before I go on here, I recognize that people get accustomed to voices and personalities in this House, but the points that I am going to bring here today are not my own. They come from a group that I want to highlight is non-partisan. Students Nova Scotia doesn't have a lawn sign come election time. They don't back any political party. They exist to advocate for students in an apolitical way, or a non-political way. They are non-profit, they are non-partisan, and they are an alliance of post-secondary student associations including the Acadia Students' Union, Cape Breton University Students' Union, St. Francis Xavier University StFX Students' Union, and Saint Mary's University Students' Association. They also have an agreement with the Association générale des étudiant.e.s de l'Université Sainte-Anne. They are the bodies that give voice to the perspective of over 20,000 students in Nova Scotian universities - a united voice in an attempt to help set the direction for post-secondary education by looking into challenges facing students, identifying solutions from a student perspective, and bringing student voice and recommendations directly to government.

[Page 2579]

These are not my words. These are not my priorities. They are not my perspectives, and I just want to highlight and amplify some voices that don't have the privilege to stand in this House and sort of interject needed perspectives into the debate on the budget.

I want to read from the advocacy document that Students Nova Scotia provided at a time we've heard members from every party recognize that for Nova Scotians affordability is top of mind as a concern: the pressures and costs of things like power, rent, groceries - you name it. One of the things that this budget confronts Nova Scotians with is job losses, the loss of grants and programs that support businesses, organizations, and the livelihoods of thousands of Nova Scotians. The impact of those reductions and cuts is immense. We know affordability. We're acutely attuned to issues of affordability.

Students Nova Scotia has this to say from a student perspective:

Affordability remains a defining issue for students across Canada, and Nova Scotia is no exception. Rising cost of living and tuition continue to place significant strain on students and their families. Simultaneously, financial support that is available to students has not kept pace with these ever-increasing costs. Many students are balancing multiple jobs or taking on additional debt to complete their studies.

I want to talk for a minute about a couple of key asks of students in Nova Scotia. When we talk about affordability, when we think about what it takes to be a successful post-secondary student in this province, what are the costs associated with that?

The first one that springs to mind is tuition. Students Nova Scotia highlights for the benefit of members of this House that despite measures taken to combat rising tuition costs, there was a recent tuition freeze for in-province students. If you are a Nova Scotian-born attendee of a Nova Scotian university, there's a freeze on tuition for them.

Nova Scotia undergraduate domestic tuition fees continue to be the highest in the country, by better than half a thousand dollars. Nova Scotia tuition on average is 28 percent higher than the national average for undergraduate education. Since 2013, average tuition fees for undergrad programs in Nova Scotia have increased by over 60 percent, despite measures introduced intended to create consistency in these costs to students.

[Page 2580]

These student-specific pressures are compounded by other rising costs: the prices of goods like groceries, the cost of power, and the cost of rent for accommodation. Those costs have increased by 30 percent over the last decade according to the Consumer Price Index of Canada.

These recommendations that I'm about to share with the House in speaking to Supply come against the backdrop of well over a decade of major cost pressures for students that rise consistently over time and create pressure for students that they have found it difficult to locate relief for.

I want to do a little bit of gesturing here to illustrate one of the things I'm trying to say. Nova Scotian students over the past decade have seen costs associated to post-secondary rise consistently and not come down at all. Tuition, housing, you name it, all of those costs rise year over year over year with relentless additions. At the same time the regime of student aid in Nova Scotia has stayed the same.

When we look at the maximum amount of student aid that students can tap into on a weekly basis, that number has been capped at $200 since the 2010s - for the past 12 years. The last adjustment to the per-week maximum that students can draw down on student aid has remained static for the past 12 years except for a one-time $20 increase in 2017. Costs, student aid - the gap between how much extra cost remains for students to pay with the limited amount of student aid they have available to them, that gap continues to grow wider and wider.

Students Nova Scotia advocates for in this budget - this is a point I made last year in this Legislature, and I'm rising again to make it this year - an increase to $300 maximum weekly student aid that would make a demonstrable impact for students facing crushing affordability pressures.

[1:15 p.m.]

On top of that, we've heard multiple members of the government caucus over the past year and half say, "The best social program is a job." Post-secondary students in Nova Scotia understand that reality. As a matter of fact, a huge number of Nova Scotian post-secondary students work one or more part-time jobs while they attend post-secondary education to help defray the costs of their education.

It's interesting: in Nova Scotia, if you work really hard at your part-time job, the amount of support you can access through student loans goes down. We punish students in Nova Scotia for their diligence in earning money through part-time employment by reducing the amount of student aid that they have access to. We know that the maximum amount of student aid in no way, shape, or form compares to the total cost of students. It's significantly lower.

[Page 2581]

How can students make up this gap? Well, you can go to work. You can get a job. In Nova Scotia, the amount of money that you can earn per week before there is a real reduction in the amount of student aid that you can access has been capped in place at $100 per week since 2011. I did a little bit of looking - in 2011 the minimum wage was just more than $9 an hour. That meant that you could work about 11 or 12 hours a week before you were capped out. Twelve hours a week. That's three evening shifts at a part-time job. That's not a bad way to help top up your student loan and make sure you can afford your education.

At the time that the number was brought in, it made some good sense. The problem with the number in policy is that it wasn't indexed to anything. We didn't look or forecast and say: How are costs expected to rise? When we put in this number, if it had been indexed to something, the amount of money that students could earn without clawbacks to student aid would have increased year over year and provided needed relief.

It's now 2026. The minimum wage in Nova Scotia is substantially higher. I think it's in the ballpark of - it's more than $15 an hour. That means that students can barely work six hours a week before they hit that cap. One of the ways that students could better fund their education is being able to access the full amount of student aid while having a higher cap for weekly income. It would go a long way. Lots of students are prepared to put in the hard work to access student aid and to help co-pay for their education.

Students Nova Scotia recommends that the government of Nova Scotia increase the maximum study period earnings - that's the weekly amount they can earn before they lose access to student aid - from $100 to $300. This measure would cost the government of Nova Scotia zero dollars. Not a dime. Students would be able to self-fund education in Nova Scotia - that's the most expensive in the country - by putting in time at part-time or paid work. I want to advocate for the government as we debate the budget. This is a common-sense, student-centred, student-advocated measure that we could implement this year in this budget that would make a demonstrable difference for students in terms of being able to afford the costs associated with pursuing post-secondary education in the province.

The last thing I want to talk about is the importance of representation. Students Nova Scotia highlights that racialized students continue to be underrepresented in post-secondary programs at every university, in every institution in our province. One of the truths that we are living in this era - tragedy has spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, and one of the clarion cries of that movement is that if we can't see ourselves, it's hard to be ourselves. At the Department of Advanced Education, there is no role dedicated to the concerns of African Nova Scotian and racialized students in terms of access to and presence in post-secondary education in the province.

We know that this is a budget that is adding administrative support for ministers. Surely across departments, savings could be realized to that staffing line to create a single position with the sole focus of infusing the department with perspective about how to recruit, how to retain, how to support, how to help African Nova Scotian and racialized students bridge the transition from high school to university or college and from college or university to the workforce. There is an absence of this perspective in the department. This leaves students at a disadvantage. It mitigates positive outcomes for these communities over time.

[Page 2582]

Creating such a position would be pennies on the Provincial dollar, in terms of the total budget, and would make a marked difference in the long-term prospects for African Nova Scotian and racialized students attending post-secondary institutions in our province.

I'm happy to rise for these few minutes and share a perspective on behalf of Nova Scotian students. We hope the government takes these suggestions into account as it works its way towards approval of this budget.

THE SPEAKER « » : We're going to take a short little recess, and we'll get going back here again in a moment.

[1:22 p.m. The House recessed.]

[1:31 p.m. The House reconvened.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, before I get started, it's a pretty cool day to look around and see the individuals up in the gallery - the veterans. Before we move on, I want to give a shoutout to my friend, Gus, and all of you. My brother, Michael, served in Afghanistan. It's something I don't share very much with people but only because I'm a private person, but I appreciate all your service, as we all do.

I ask everyone here to stand up and give a round of applause to these incredible human beings. (Standing ovation)

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to revert to Government Notices of Motion. Along with that, we would request that the member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island and the member for Sydney-Membertou, along with the member for Cumberland North and the member for Lunenburg West, be able to give an extra member statement today to honour these amazing human beings.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request to revert to Government Notices of Motion, with Member Statements added on.

[Page 2583]

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

[GOVERNMENT NOTICES OF MOTION]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister responsible for Military Relations.

HON. BARBARA ADAMS « » : Speaker, I rise to ask permission to make an introduction first.

THE SPEAKER « » : Please do.

BARBARA ADAMS « » : Speaker, it is my absolute privilege and honour to introduce the delegation for the 35^th anniversary of Operation Friction and the end of the Persian Gulf War.

In all the galleries here today, we are pleased to have with us members of the delegation, including some of the brave veterans who served in the Persian Gulf War. They are accompanied by two veterans of the Afghanistan War. Joining them today in the Red Room are some of their loved ones, who support them, and staff with Veterans Affairs Canada.

Thousands of Canadians served in the Gulf War, including women for the first time in our country's history. For generations, Nova Scotians have been proud to answer the call to defend our values. The Premier's father was also a veteran, and many of my family members were as well.

So I know that when our members were serving, they were missing their loved ones at home who were supporting them on the home front. Today, we are lucky enough to have both veterans and some of their family members here with us so we can all show our thanks.

Thank you all for coming here today. Thank you for your service.

Speaker, I ask all members in the gallery to please rise and accept the warm welcome of the House. (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : Welcome to the People's House. It is not only a pleasure but an honour to have you here with us today. Thank you for your service. As an army brat, if you will, I completely understand, not what you went through, but what your families have gone through. You really dedicated your whole lives to serving this country. Thank you so much.

[Page 2584]

The Minister responsible for Military Relations.

RESOLUTION NO. 363

HON. BARBARA ADAMS « » : I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas over 4,000 Canadians joined a coalition of forces from over 35 countries and served in the Persian Gulf Region from 1990 to 1991; and

Whereas the Gulf War was an important milestone as the first time Canadian women served in combat roles, forever changing our military while serving in all branches of the Canadian Armed Forces; and

Whereas our veterans' service during the Gulf War is a testament to Canadians' enduring commitment to freedom, global peace, and security;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of the House join me in honouring Canadians contributing during the Gulf War and thanking our veterans who bravely served our country.

Speaker, I request waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

[STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

MILLER, VADM DUNCAN "DUSTY": GULF WAR VET. - RECOG.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Speaker, I am pleased to rise to honour retired Vice Admiral Duncan "Dusty" Miller, a longtime resident of Halifax Citadel-Sable Island who is here in the gallery today. At 15, retired Vice Admiral Miller first joined the Navy, but had to wait another year. Once he joined, there was no stopping him. Over a 38-year career he commanded a minesweeper, a helicopter destroyer, the first Canadian destroyer squadron, and the Canadian Forces Maritime Worker Centre. He was a defence advisor to the Prime Minister.

[Page 2585]

During the Gulf War he commanded Canada's Naval Task Group and the 60-ship Allied Combat Logistics Force. He served for three years as head of Canada's East Coast Navy in Halifax, from 1997 to 2000. His last job was as Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commanders NATO Headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia.

Vice Admiral Miller retired in 2003. He was the honorary colonel for the Cyclone 406 Maritime Operational Training Squadron and Chair of the National Board of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires. You might also recognize Duncan from the stage. He has appeared in many Gilbert and Sullivan productions across Canada, even fielding a call from a Prime Minister in costume, and he is a choral singer with Nova Voce. He and his partner, Ann, are ardent supporters of Phoenix Youth Services and very engaged hockey grandparents.

I ask all members to join me in acknowledging retired Vice Admiral Duncan Miller's ongoing contributions to community.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

GULF WAR VETS.: YELLOW RIBBON - HONOUR

HON DEREK MOMBORUQUETTE: I want to join my colleagues in welcoming veterans of the Gulf War to the Legislature today. You'll notice that members of the House are wearing a yellow ribbon - a small symbol, but one that carries deep meaning. It represents courage, sacrifice, and the families who stood behind those who served.

During the Gulf War, more than 4,500 Canadians deployed, including many sailors who left from our own harbour in Halifax. Air crew and soldiers from across the province stepped forward to serve in a distant and dangerous mission, proud to wear the Canadian uniform. Their contributions are part of Nova Scotia's long and proud military tradition. While the mission might feel like history to some, for those who served and their families, the impact is lasting.

To our veterans joining us today, thank you for your service. We are proud to stand with you.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable members for Cumberland North.

GULF WAR VETS.: PRESENCE IN HOUSE - THANKS

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : I also join my colleagues here in this House to stand and to say thank you to all the veterans who are here today, and to those who were unable to join us today, for your service for our country.

[Page 2586]

It's a very emotional thing for us here to have you join us, to think of your sacrifice over 35 years ago. I actually remember that time. I was in university, my fourth year, and I remember watching the television, watching the bombs going off and truly being scared of what was happening in the world, and while we were at home worried, you went forth with courage to stand for our country, to stand for peace, and to fight for freedoms and liberty.

We have the honour of being here to represent our constituents, and we have a responsibility to stand for freedom, to stand for our liberties, and to stand for democracy. I can tell you that I will continue to do that and join my colleagues here in this House to honour you for the work that you did, for your colleagues who never made it home.

I will say, it is emotional. My grandfather served in World War II, and my husband and I are proud parents of a son who serves in the Canadian Navy. He is out in Victoria, in Esquimalt now. I couldn't be prouder as a mother, knowing that he is going to serve our country like you did. Thank you so much for being here with us today. We appreciate you.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

MILITARY VETS.: REMEMBRANCE - HONOUR

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Thank you, Speaker, for the opportunity to honour the veterans who join us today. Like so many Nova Scotians, I have a personal connection to remembrance. Both of my grandparents served in the Second World War, and growing up, their stories - the quiet kind that they didn't tell often - left a lasting impression on me. What also left an impression on me was the quiet dignity with which they carried that experience. It taught me that remembrance is not only about what happened in the past, but also about the responsibility that we carry into the future.

For them, wearing a poppy wasn't about symbolism alone. It was a gesture of gratitude and a promise - a promise not to remember only the sacrifice of those who served, but the values they fought for - freedom, democracy, and decency. They taught me that remembrance is not only about what happened in the past, but also about the responsibility that we carry into the future.

We honour our veterans in the way we treat each other every day with kindness, with civility, with respect even when we disagree because those who served, those we remember and honour, didn't fight for uniformity. They fought for freedom, for the right to think differently, to speak openly, and to live together in a society where these differences don't divide us. That is what makes remembrance such a powerful and timeless act. It is not about the past; it is about who we are as a people today.

[Page 2587]

When we see forces of division and polarization creeping into communities and conversations, this calls on us to resist them, to stand up for the values our veterans defended, respect for our democratic institutions, faith in each other, the courage to engage with honesty and integrity, even when it would be easier to turn away or tune out.

The veterans who join us here today and all the other veterans faced enormous challenges, often in the darkest moments of history, and yet they acted with courage and unity. They believed in a Canada that stood for freedom, fairness, and the common good. We owe it to them and to the generations that came after to protect those ideals, not only in our institutions but in our daily interactions with one another. In recognizing the bravery of those who fought, we must also find the courage to stand for what's right here at home, to uphold civility in public life, to speak with compassion, and to build understanding instead of suspicion.

My grandparents believed that remembrance wasn't something you performed once a year. It was something you practised in how you lived. They would remind me that the freedoms we enjoy today were earned through unimaginable sacrifice, and those freedoms depend not only on strong institutions but strong communities where people show up for one another, lend a hand, and honour service in all its forms.

Speaker, I call on the members of the House to carry forward that spirit in our words and actions by treating each other with respect, by protecting the democratic ideals that bind us, and by showing the same courage and integrity of those who join us here today - those we honour. I ask my colleagues to join me in extending my deepest gratitude to these veterans.

[1:45 p.m.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Honourable members, that's how special you are. I'm usually a harsh Speaker, and we're only allowed to speak for a minute in Statements by Members.

The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, I beg leave to make an introduction.

THE SPEAKER « » : Please do.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, in the gallery today is a constituent of mine - a man who seems to like to surprise me, as of late - the Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command President George Della Valle. He's also a member of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 078. He recently gave me quite the surprise: honorary president for the Legion and made me bawl my eyes out several times over. So, I want to say thank you to all of them for their service and thank you to George for all his service. (Applause)

[Page 2588]

THE SPEAKER « » : Thank you again for coming. Words cannot explain how much gratitude we have for what you've done, so thank you. Now I have to go back to being a strict Speaker and to business.

We'll now return to debate on reply. Are there speakers?

The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : Speaker, Nova Scotia has a lot of amazing businesses. We all have our favourites. Obviously, I'm incredibly passionate about giving a voice to entrepreneurs in this province.

Many of us in the room were in business for ourselves before we were in politics. Nova Scotia - we love a good resiliency story. We pride ourselves on the 80-hour work week, and we almost wear it as a badge of honour. We love to tell the stories about how that business survived COVID-19 and how that business survived the construction on the streets that lasted way too long. Now, we're talking about those businesses that are surviving inflation and rising costs.

These stories deserve respect. They deserve to be told. They deserve to be a part of the story, but I do have a thought. Why are we so comfortable in celebrating survival instead of celebrating success? Every crisis - COVID-19, inflation, power outages, supply-chain disruptions - we say, "Ah, you're so resilient. You pushed through. You adapted."

It feels as though resiliency has become a stand-in for supports that are never provided.

When a new entrepreneur walks into a bank for the first time for that loan, the banker doesn't ask for the resiliency plan because it's not in the business plan. I believe that it shouldn't be a requirement for survival in small business. Small business cannot and should not be a shock absorber for failed public policy. They can't absorb every rising cost. They can't absorb renovictions. They can't absorb staff shortages and infrastructure gaps and be left smiling.

In Nova Scotia, small businesses make up the majority of employers. I know how hard it can be to keep a business going. I had a seven-month-old when COVID-19 hit. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. With rising costs and tariff uncertainty, small businesses in Nova Scotia are concerned about the future. They're concerned about making it to next year. They're concerned about making payroll next week, and that's saying something. We all know that small businesses aren't asking for a lot. They just want a clear path to bring their dream to life so they can provide for themselves, their families, and their communities.

[Page 2589]

They contribute something to their communities in a way that's just so Nova Scotia. That's what this government promised when they were elected. They said they'd make things easier. They even guaranteed a better paycheque. They talked a lot about supporting local. But this government has been around for five years, and we're not seeing those boosts to small businesses. Commercial rents in this province have risen higher and faster than in any other province. It's pushing businesses to close up for good. I get calls all the time. That's not what anybody wants, and that's not what anybody needs.

Each business that closes, each dream that dies, shows how far Nova Scotia is straying from living up to its very best potential. If the government were serious about helping small businesses, about doing more than high-fives for being resilient, they'd be feeling that difference by now.

It's tough right now. It's really tough. There's a lot of uncertainty. There are a lot of pressures outside of Nova Scotia, but this government needs to do more than rely on the resilience of small businesses. A Province that relies on small-business resilience is a Province that's comfortable shifting the risk downward. I feel like a Province that wants real economic growth builds conditions where small businesses can thrive.

Imagine for a moment a Nova Scotia where small businesses can predict their costs, where child care availability doesn't determine whether a business can stay open, and where businesses aren't undercut. We don't need tougher, more resilient small business owners. We need better policy, because if small businesses are constantly needing to be resilient, something upstream is broken. We shouldn't be asking small businesses to save our economy through grit and determination.

A flourishing small-business sector is not loud or dramatic. It's steady, it's predictable, and it's sustainable.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE « » : I'm just going to get started. I think I'll probably be back up here to share a bit more about mental health and addictions in this province.

What I thought I would do is start by talking about current wait times and the information available to Nova Scotians about those wait times. I've got everybody's district and/or clinic here ready to talk about it.

First of all, I've talked about these data points before, and I am going to take a brief moment to explain what they mean. On the mental health wait times website for all of the NSHA clinics - for children and youth, of course, there are also IWK Health Centre clinics - you'll see the wait time listed, basically, to be seen for the first time, which is not treatment. It's not actually an appointment. It's a quick touch base. In most cases, it's not a full assessment.

[Page 2590]

They talk about the 50th percentile. That means that 50 percent of people, in fact, got earlier service. It also means that 50 percent of people get later service. Then we also have the information about the first appointment. That's where you would really start to consider what a treatment plan would look like.

The first thing I want to say is that it used to include the 90th percentile. That was really helpful. That really gave you a sense of the best you could hope for at 50 percent, but 90 percent pretty much meant that everyone who was on a wait-list had probably been seen. Those were great. We're down to 50th percentile for both being seen and your first appointment.

There are some pretty long wait times still in this province. I might take just a minute to talk about why it's important to have timely access to mental health support. We probably can all think about people in our lives who have been struggling with mental health issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In all those cases, the longer people wait for treatment, the more embedded the illness becomes. We can prevent a lot of serious mental health concerns and illness by providing prompt treatment. This is something that has been learned across the country - around the world - in early psychosis treatment, for instance. The first time somebody has a psychotic incident, they are able to get into treatment and get into the treatments that they'll need to maintain stability.

It's important, and there's lots of research that also says that if you have to wait a long time, your adherence to treatment decreases, as well. I know lots of this information because I was a recipient of a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship to pursue my PhD and know how to speak to how important that funding is.

The nearest site for my constituency and for Halifax writ large is the Bayers Road Centre non-urgent clinic. For some reason, the data isn't available on their specific drop-down menu, but it is in the summary charts.

If you are someone who says: Hey, you know what? You're an adult, a person over 18 in Halifax who's thinking you need to talk to somebody. Either your anxiety is preventing you from going to work or making going to school hard, or you're concerned about these extremes of your moods, you want to seek treatment, so you sign up to send to referral.

In Halifax you're going to wait - the 50^th percentile is going to wait 129 days before you get your first appointment. As I said, this for non-urgent. Especially for folks who are seeking treatment, it might be hard to understand the line between non-urgent and urgent. Also, non-urgent can become urgent during that time, and that could have been avoided. The disruption of having a mental health crisis could be avoided with prompt treatment.

[Page 2591]

One hundred twenty-nine days for the 50^th percentile - we don't know how many days it takes for the rest of the people. Fifty percent of people take longer than 129 days, which is a long time. If you're a student at university, it's a semester. If you're someone struggling to go to work, you're probably going to lose your job. This is an enormous amount of time. Then after that, you'd have to wait an additional 16 days before your first appointment, and your first appointment is when there might be some direction in terms of assessment, treatments, and sort of an agreement to work together.

One hundred twenty-nine days for 50 percent of people. Fifty percent of people wait longer in Halifax, and then 50 percent of those people get their first appointment in 16 days.

Maybe it's better across the harbour. Downtown Dartmouth is pretty great these days. There's lots happening. The Dartmouth Portland Street clinic - non-urgent clinic - the current wait time at the 50^th percentile is 142 days. So, it gets worse when you cross the harbour. If you're someone who wants to seek a consult for mental health concerns, 50 percent of the folks are going to be seen within 142 days, but 50 percent of the folks are going to wait longer than 142 days, and we don't know - with publicly available data - how long.

Maybe I'll make it a little more interesting and get to some - Spryfield. For the member for Halifax Atlantic, the wait time is 122 days for the 50^th percentile to receive their first contact and an additional 13 days for their first appointment.

For the Valley - Kings South, Kings North, Kings West, the Valley regional clinics - the wait times for the 50^th percentile for your first assessment is 77 days. So 50 percent of people in the Valley are waiting longer than 77 days for their first contact in the mental health system, plus an additional 88 days - 50 percent are waiting an additional 88 days for their actual appointment.

[2:00 p.m.]

Again, we don't have a lot of publicly available data about mental health in Nova Scotia. It is actually very hard to assess the state of mental health in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, it's also very hard to know directly if what we're doing in terms of mental health treatment is working.

We look at things like the social determinants of health. We think about various outcomes in terms of employment, homelessness. We can think about a whole bunch of things that can tell us a thing, but we actually have very little direct data.

Interestingly, in the Valley - Kings West, Kings South, Kings North - 77 days, 50 percent of people get their first appointment. Other people wait longer. We don't know how long because the data is not available. Then 50 percent wait another 88 days to have their first appointment. That means 50 percent of those folks will wait longer than 88 days to get their appointment.

[Page 2592]

That would seem to me that there has probably been something done in the system to make that first contact lower. I can see that because if you go online - and I'm not using this as a prop - but look, there are graphs. You can follow the trends over time.

There has been something done around assessment, but it has not been equalled in treatment. I look forward to sharing every region's information in a future speech.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The motion is carried.

[2:16 p.m. The House resolved into the CWH on Supply with Deputy Speaker Tom Taggart in the Chair.]

[6:33 p.m. CWH on Supply rose and the House reconvened. The Speaker, Hon. Danielle Barkhouse, resumed the Chair.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on Supply reports:

THE CLERK » : That the Committee of the Whole on Supply has met and made some progress and begs leave to sit again.

THE SPEAKER « » : Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

[GOVERNMENT BUSINESS]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call the order of business Public Bills for Second Reading.

PUBLIC BILLS FOR SECOND READING

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call Bill No. 201.

Bill No. 201 - Justice and Social Services Act.

[Page 2593]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Opportunities and Social Development.

HON. BARBARA ADAMS « » : I move that Bill No. 201 be now read a second time.

Speaker, I am so pleased to be standing here today to introduce amendments that touch on something we all care about deeply, the safety, dignity, and well-being of children, youth, and families in Nova Scotia. These changes reflect our shared belief that every young person deserves protection, privacy, and the opportunity to grow up in a world that sees their potential and helps them reach it.

As Minister of Opportunities and Social Development I meet families who are navigating some of the most difficult moments of their lives. I've met young people who have faced challenges in situations no child should ever have to be in. Through all these conversations I've already had as minister, I am always struck by the same truth, they deserve much more than simply a system. They deserve compassion and they deserve hope. They deserve adults who stand up for them when they cannot stand up for themselves.

The amendments we are introducing today are rooted in that promise. We are strengthening protections for survivors of domestic violence by extending emergency protection orders to a maximum of one year. When someone is trying to rebuild their life after violence, 30 days protection is not enough. These changes give survivors and their children more time, more stability, and more peace as they heal.

We are also enhancing the privacy rights of children and youth involved in court proceedings. In a world where information travels quickly, and often carelessly, the consequences of exposure can last a lifetime. By prohibiting the publication of identifying information, including on social media, and by making it clear that these bans remain in place even after a proceeding has ended, we are choosing compassion over curiosity. Even in situations of deep tragedy, their story is not for public consumption. I think we can all agree that their memory deserves protection and respect.

Another important amendment strengthens the Child Abuse Register by ensuring that anyone who has pled guilty or anyone who has been found guilty of an offence involving a child is added to the register, even when a conditional or absolute discharge is granted. This is about preventing harm before it happens and strengthening an already vital safeguard that helps protect young people across our province.

We are also clarifying the minister's responsibility to support youth as they age out of our care because turning 18 does not magically make someone ready for adulthood, and we have a responsibility to be there for them. Young people need guidance, stability, and someone who believes in them. This amendment reinforces our ongoing duty to walk alongside them as they build their futures.

[Page 2594]

Finally, we are taking an important step to modernize how social work is regulated in the province of Nova Scotia. As a physiotherapist for the past 41 years, I have worked with social workers for decades. I know that they do some of the hardest, most emotional work in our communities. More than 400 social workers in the province of Nova Scotia work in our department alone, supporting people in moments of vulnerability and crisis and in times when what they need is support, hope, and guidance. Their work has evolved significantly since the Social Workers Act was created in 1993, and the legislation has not kept pace with their remarkable skills.

Today's social work is as much a health care profession as a child- and family-serving one. To reflect that evolution in their care and competencies, we are repealing the Social Workers Act and transitioning the regulation of social work to the Regulated Health Professions Act, the same framework that governs me, doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselling therapists, and other health professionals. This change will modernize oversight, strengthen public protection, and support the continued growth of this amazing profession in health care and community settings.

In the months ahead, we will continue working closely with the Department of Health and Wellness, the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, and social workers themselves to develop the new regulations that reflect the realities of their practice and what they are able to offer Nova Scotians. This is thoughtful, careful work, and it will help to ensure that their profession remains strong, trusted, and responsive, while providing space for their profession to evolve.

As we strengthen their standards across the system, we are also moving forward with Nova Scotia's first office for children and youth. This new office will give young people an independent voice, one that protects their rights, lifts their experiences, and helps ensure that government decisions keep their best interests at the centre. This will build on the work already under way through our practice framework, the Path Program, and expanded supports for youth and families, helping to create a system where children and youth are truly seen, heard, and supported.

Together, all these amendments reflect something fundamental. When children and families are at their most vulnerable, our responsibility is at its greatest. The decisions we make here in this Legislature - not just in policy but in everyday lives of the young people and families who rely on us - they need us to get it right.

Although legislation cannot solve every challenge that a family may face, these changes will strengthen the protections that we can offer. With these amendments, we are taking practical steps to make our system safer, more responsive, and stronger for both children and those who support them.

We will continue to work alongside our communities, service providers, and families to ensure that these protections are meaningful and in practice. This legislation and work is about children growing up safe, families feeling supported, and young people knowing that their privacy and well-being truly matter.

[Page 2595]

I want to thank all members of the House for their comments coming up on Bill No. 201. With that, I move second reading.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Fairview-Clayton Park.

LINA HAMID « » : Here we are again looking at an omnibus bill - a bill that includes three different departments. While it has some good things, there are certainly some things that raise some serious concern.

Changes to the Children and Family Services Act and the Emergency Protection Orders are good. They extend protection that families and survivors of gender-based violence deserve. Under the Domestic Violence Intervention Act, it changes the 30 days to one year. Rather than every 30 days, survivors or families surviving domestic violence having to do it every 30 days, it's after a year, so you don't have to keep reliving that every 30 days. That's a great change.

However, the impact of these changes could have been larger. We could have seen greater prevention measures added to the Children and Family Services Act. We could have seen greater education for judges and peace officers around emergency protection orders. Again, some things are really lacking and some things raise some major questions.

Families are doing their best to take care of their kids, and government should be doing everything possible to make sure children are safe online and everywhere else. Advocates and everyday Nova Scotians have been calling for updates on protection orders for years. Given the work being done in our province to address intimate partner violence, updates to emergency orders are long overdue.

Social workers do vital work taking care of Nova Scotians. The minister had just mentioned working with social workers and having a lot of respect for them. I'm confused as to why the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers and social workers under NSGEU were not consulted before this bill was put forward. This change was made without any type of warning or any type of even, "Hey, here's a heads-up, here's what we're doing with your regulated profession." Nothing. We have serious concerns about this government's failure to consult with the people who are actually doing the work.

I'm going to read the media release that the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has put out regarding this, because again, the minister mentioned having respect for those people doing the work. Here is their response to these changes:

The Executive Council of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers (NSCSW) is deeply disappointed by the government's decision to repeal the Social Workers Act without prior notice or consultation. Proactive regulation depends, in part, on a collaborative relationship of trust between the College and government.

[Page 2596]

The College has a longstanding commitment to ensuring the safe and ethical delivery of social work practice in Nova Scotia, which includes a critical advocacy role.

For decades, the NSCSW has worked tirelessly to address risks and challenges in the field of social work. The College has been a strong advocate for bio-psycho-social mental health services, strengthening child and family well-being, and pursuing ethical solutions to systemic issues, such as the staggering reality of 40,000 children living in poverty. Notably, the College's advocacy efforts led to the creation of the Office of Children and Youth in Nova Scotia.

[6:45 p.m.]

The Executive expresses concern that the repeal of the Social Workers Act may silence the College's advocacy voice - a voice that has consistently championed the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations.

"This decision marks a troubling shift," said Robert Wright, President of the NSCSW. "It erodes the independence of social work as a self-regulated profession and places it under government watch, rather than maintaining an independent voice that works in the public's best interest."

While the College remains committed to collaborating with the government to bring the profession of social work under the Regulated Health Professions Act (RHPA), the NSCSW will continue to use its mandate and expertise to advocate for ethical, effective, and equitable social work practices in Nova Scotia. The College is determined to ensure that the interests of the most vulnerable members of society - the very people social workers serve - are not overlooked.

The College calls on the government to engage in meaningful dialogue with the NSCSW to ensure that the profession of social work can continue to operate independently and in the best interest of the public.

[Page 2597]

Again, here we are facing an issue where changes are made to a group of people who were not consulted at all. This completely changes how this profession is managed and they were not even aware that this was coming forward. Consultation lacking once again.

Going back, this bill touches on three different departments. Under the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, changes are made to reflect a recent review of the Children and Family Services Act. The publication bans on children involved in family court proceedings are extended to social media after death, and so in an age where that's where a lot of people get their news and their entertainment, it is good to see that this has finally made the cut.

Clarification is provided to ensure that anyone found guilty of an offence against a child, even when an absolute or conditional discharge has been given, will be entered into the Child Abuse Register. The current practice of extending an offer of care to children aging out of the child welfare system up to the age of 25 is formally added into legislation to ensure the practice is required to continue on an ongoing basis.

Children who are in care aging out of the system - or now, I guess, formally they won't be aging out, so that's good - but traditionally when they are aging out, it's basically: "You're now above the age. Figure it out yourself." This allows them to continue to get care and services as they establish themselves outside of care.

We support the practice of offering care up to the age of 25 to youth transitioning out of the child welfare system and that it is becoming official policy moving forward. This gives youth the opportunity to establish themselves. They have the time and the support to get an education and truly find their place in the world, but once again, this bill could have done more.

The Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, as an organization that is intimately familiar with how this act is translating on the ground and in people's lives, has consistently called on government to ground the Act in a more preventive approach. For social workers to implement a preventive approach, they need a comprehensive range of supports to offer to folks, backed by a dedicated budget.

This act and the budget that is passing through this legislation right now do not deliver what is needed for a preventive approach.

Under the Department of Justice, the emergency protections order can now last up to a year, up from 30 days. This is a win for folks in the sector like the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia, who has been asking for this to be changed for years. It will offer survivors of gender-based violence a greater degree of protection. However, it's disappointing that this change is being paired with cuts to Domestic Violence Court. It's further disappointing that it doesn't seem like this initiative is going to be paired with an increase in efforts to make it easier for survivors of gender-based violence to get emergency protection orders.

[Page 2598]

We heard from Lucy Bowser from Pictou County, who had applied for an Emergency Protection Order to keep her and her kids safe. She was initially denied, and when she finally got it put in place, there were no consequences when her abuser violated those conditions.

We hear stories like Lucy's far too frequently. We need to make sure that those responsible for Emergency Protection Orders, including judges and peace officers, have the education, tools, and trauma-informed training that they need to keep survivors safe.

The last one, which is the one that, again, really brings about the most concern, is that the bill eliminates the Social Workers Act and moves regulation of the profession over to the PC government's 2023 Regulated Health Professions Act. We have been told that this aligns with the Mass Casualty Commission's findings that all caring professions should have a standard regulation across professions. However, once again, the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers were not consulted prior to this coming as a bill to the House. Social workers working under the Nova Scotia NSGEU were also not consulted prior to this coming.

It really calls into question - why? Why were they not consulted? They were not consulted, and they worry that this change will have a negative impact on the advocacy role that they play in the province. We have serious questions, again, about why they were not consulted. For this bill to be before us right now, the minister must have known that this change was in the mix for months, yet the minister could not find the time to pick up the phone and let folks at the College know.

To us, the lack of engagement suggests that this government does not have pure motives with this change. Additionally, there are many, many more recommendations that were made under the Mass Casualty Commission. Why is this the one we are choosing to move so quickly on without even consulting the people it's going to impact the most?

We would like to hear from the minister about why the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has not been involved in this change. That would be important for us to know. But once again, it's unfortunately unsurprising that things are being moved forward without consultation. This is the pattern that we've been seeing here.

I'm going to move next to a Facebook post from somebody who calls the government their employer, saying that, If I speak to my close friends and family about my job for any length of time, sooner or later, I tell them how grateful I am for the clause of the Social Workers Act.

[Page 2599]

The Social Workers Act did need to be updated. It did not need to be completely removed. Its registrants are being shuffled to the Regulated Health Professions Act, which doesn't have that transformative clause in it about advocacy.

Again, there is a whole lot more that was said by folks - by social workers in the College of Social Workers about why they had not been consulted on this change. The minister has been quoted as saying that "This change will help ensure the profession remains strong, trusted and responsive. It will also modernize oversight and strengthen public protection and support continued growth of the profession in both health care and in community settings."

If we see that they have impact on not just health care, why are we moving all of them under that one umbrella? They already have their own regulations Act. Why not just update that? Why not consult with the College of Social Workers? Why not consult with social workers who are working under the government?

What this means to the College of Social Workers is that the voice that they have been using to effect policy change, including the creation of the Child and Youth Advocate Office, is officially stopped. The type of advocacy under the Regulated Health Professions Act means the Minister can now have the authority to intervene in any of the College's operations if they feel that it is in the public's interest to do so.

If the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers is talking about child poverty being the highest in Atlantic Canada or that there are over 40,000 children living in poverty currently and that this impacts the safe and ethical delivery of childhood and family well-being, the minister can effectively say, "Nope. Just stop."

Alec Stratford has also been quoted saying:

We're here discussing a pretty horrific austerity budget that will have a substantial impact on the lives of vulnerable and marginalized people. This is one less voice now in civil society that is able to advocate for the type of policies that might impact their lives.

While they welcome the opportunity to work with the government, this is something that should have happened before this bill was brought to the floor.

Once again, we're wondering why the College of Social Workers was not consulted. Why were social workers working under NSGEU not advised of this change? We've had a chat with a few of them, and unfortunately, I can't repeat some of the unparliamentary words that were used to express how they feel about this change. These are the government's own employees, and this is how they feel about this change. The government couldn't even consult with its own employees before putting this through.

[Page 2600]

I'm going to go over that Social Workers Act change once again because it's unfortunate that this is being paired with issues in the bill that are good. There are things in the bill that are good: the protection of children and the publications ban, and the protection of families and survivors of gender-based violence. All great stuff. If the government felt so confident about changing social workers' regulations, why was this not a bill of its own? Obviously, it was paired with all this other great stuff for a reason, once again showing that there are likely not pure motives coming with this change.

The Nova Scotia College of Social Workers did not ask for this change. Again, it's under the Mass Casualty Commission recommendations, but there are so many more. Where are those changes? This is going to weaken the impact that the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has when supporting social workers in this province.

The other great thing here is being able to extend services and care to youth up to the age of 25. We've always known that the definition of youth is up to 30, but up to 25 is a good change. We're glad to see that being put in there formally.

[7:00 p.m.]

The emergency protection order is now lasting for up to a year, rather than 30 days. Again, even with this one, it's not as full as it could have been.

It's worth hearing from the Minister of Justice about why this is such a bare-bones thing to put through. While introduced by the Minister of Opportunities and Social Development, this part is completely under the Department of Justice.

There needs to be more than just reactive measures. There needs to be preventative measures. With a budget that has so many cuts, including cuts to courts, what is the point of this if more money is not being put through? More education for judges and peace officers is not being put through.

More changes about who responds to these crises - that's another big one. Why are there no changes to that? That could have been under this Justice portion too. There's so much more that could have gone under this and, on its own, would have been a fantastic bill. It would have been great.

Let's take more recommendations from the Mass Casualty Commission into consideration. It's more than just this one.

We go back now to the Social Workers Act being completely repealed and eliminated. I would love to know the reason that the people being impacted by this, the people who are doing the work, the people on the ground - why were they not consulted?

[Page 2601]

Why are we moving forward with this now? Why do we need to put it in the middle of another omnibus bill if the government feels so confident about putting those changes through? Again, bring bills forward separately.

I think I know why. When we have some type of opposition to it, somebody is going to say, well, the NDP didn't support the protection of survivors of gender-based violence. We do. We obviously do. We've been pushing for more changes to protect survivors. We've been pushing for more support for youth in this province. Nobody asked for the Social Workers Act to be removed - without consultation, particularly.

Furthermore - well, maybe I won't go into that.

If we'd had an independent child and youth advocate in place, this probably would not have come through. There is absolutely no reason why this change needs to happen without consultation.

Cutting the wings off the advocacy efforts of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers is completely unacceptable. They do some amazing work, supporting some of the most amazing people in our province, doing some of the hardest work - work that I'm sure would burn us out. It's really difficult work.

They should be able to turn around to their college and ask for support with issues. Now this basically gives the minister the ability to say no to their advocacy efforts. It's just going to fall under all other regulated health professions Acts established under this government.

This lack of engagement really suggests that (a) the government is not confident in this change; (b) there's some type of motive behind this change that the social workers and general public would not have approved of; or maybe even (c) saying look, we're enacting recommendations of the Mass Casualty Commission, we're doing great. Again, I'm really confused as to why the consultation part is lacking so often.

Many things have come through here and we've seen people from all over the province. I know they are in this government's inboxes because they're definitely in our inboxes saying, nobody told me this was coming, this is not what I voted for, this is not what they ran on.

Knowing that this change was coming, I'm sure that this bill was not dropped on the minister's desk the day before it was introduced to the House. I'm sure this is something the department has been working on. In all of that time, I'm sure it takes a long time to put those bills together and in all of that time there wasn't a singular moment when somebody thought: "Hey, let's reach out to the people doing the work that this is going to impact."

[Page 2602]

How badly is the time managed? There has to be a reason why there wasn't a singular moment found before this was brought to the House. I look forward to hearing that. The College of Social Workers - again they do some amazing work, supporting some of the most amazing people doing the hardest work in our province, supporting some of our most vulnerable citizens. So under their critical analysis of the Children and Family Services Act, which they do pretty regularly, I do suggest that this government take a look at those reports and make a better effort at implementing more of their recommendations. But it had provided a thorough and critical analysis of the Children and Family Services Act in Nova Scotia.

The primary goal of this analysis is to enhance the quality and effectiveness of programs and services under the CFSA - the Children and Family Services Act. It services children, their families, the protection of children and adoption. It's pivotal legislation aimed at protecting children from harm, safeguarding children's rights and promoting family preservation. While effort has been made by the Department of Opportunities and Social Development to transform programs and services for vulnerable children and their families in this province, recent research data and public consultations - which the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers does - indicate that to achieve the goals and objectives set out in the preamble of the Act, significant reform and new funding is required; not cuts.

The literature identifies key principles such as prevention, early intervention, and family preservation are crucial but are hindered by a lack of necessary resources. Before this budget was brought forward, we had already been in a lack of resources to make sure that this work is carried out correctly. Now with a new budget with cuts, it's going to be even harder to keep our most vulnerable citizens safe.

The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children Restorative Inquiry has highlighted the need for sufficient services to be provided by the Province to foster well-being, including building strong relationships and spiritual and cultural connections. We did see in the new Children and Family Services Act that was introduced, I believe in 2025, some more was put in place to address that. That's great to see. That is a positive change, but how are we going to make sure that this work is carried out with fewer resources and a smaller budget than last year?

For bringing forward these changes, saying that we're going to do this extra work to make sure that we're addressing the spiritual and cultural connections of African Nova Scotian and Mi'kmaw children in care, where are the resources to back that up? The reality is transformational change is ever more challenging in Nova Scotia, where high poverty rates and adverse social determinants of health have been linked with negative childhood outcomes. According to the most recent Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report, we have the highest rate of child poverty in Atlantic Canada.

Rather than ensuring that our children have all the supports in place that they need, we're cutting the wings off the advocacy efforts of the college that supports the people supporting our children, in addition to budget cuts, of course, unfortunately. Again, the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers does all types of public consultation before they release even a report, but the government is lacking on public consultation when putting forward a bill? Something that has a much bigger impact?

[Page 2603]

Another report conducted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives examined the challenges faced by child protection social workers in Nova Scotia's Department of Opportunities and Social Development, highlighting issues such as excessive caseloads, understaffing, inadequate resources, insufficient training, and moral distress. With the new Children and Family Services Act, the wording around caseloads has been completely removed. If we're now going to disallow the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers to be able to advocate for social workers by putting them all under the Regulated Health Professions Act, then there's going to be even less of an effort and less of an impact on the advocacy that the college can do to support things like lighter caseloads, better staffing, adequate resources, appropriate training, and ways to avoid burnout.

[7:15 p.m.]

There need to be comprehensive policy reforms. The changing, or complete repeal, of the Social Worker Regulations is not that. It's not a comprehensive policy reform, and it most definitely has not been brought forward to the people doing the hard work - the people the minister appreciates so much. We're likely going to see the well-being of children in our province continue to deteriorate, unfortunately.

Here's another question on top of why there wasn't consultation: How is this going to address the well-being of our children? What type of benefit do we see by repealing the Social Workers Act? What type of hopefully positive impact is that going to have on the embarrassingly high rate of poverty that our province has? This is not a statistic we should be proud of.

Rather than putting something through that would actually support children and families living in poverty, we're undercutting the people who do the hard work. Social workers have a pretty high rate of exiting their roles due to not having the appropriate supports in place, whether it's resources, whether it's training, or whether it's support with caseloads.

Now, with the new budget, we're hearing about the administrative positions that support social workers not being filled. Now rather than doing their work, they're going to be doing administrative work. Rather than being out in the field, doing what they do best, they're going to have to focus on paperwork to be able to move on to the next case. Rather than ensuring that they have, again, the supports they need to do their jobs effectively and in a way that will most positively impact the outcomes of children and families in our province, we're changing the way that their profession is regulated without any type of consultation.

[Page 2604]

Again, maybe consultation is not this government's thing. I mean, it seems like it, but at least a heads-up - I'm sure there's a line of contact between the department and the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, at the very least, a line of contact between this department and social workers working under the NSGEU and in the department itself. Social workers working under the Department of Opportunities and Social Development were not even made aware. They did not know this change was coming. I know for a fact that there is most definitely a line of contact there. Why were they not given a heads-up? This department didn't have to take their advice if they didn't want to. Just tell them what's happening. That's all that needed to happen.

Again, in the report by the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, they do their public consultations and they consistently found reference to the need to improve service delivery and recommended transforming the current governance structure, not repealing it. Change it. Make it better. The consultation report sets out the need to establish an office of child and family well-being with a dedicated minister and chief officer role and the importance of regulating professions within a new structure, establishing interdepartmental working groups, allowing community partners to advocate without fear of repercussions, and allocating core funding for service supports.

Transparency and accountability are critical for any government department, so not even giving them a heads-up brings about a whole lot of questions.

I'm going to give a few final thoughts. Why did the department refuse to work with the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers to improve the lives of families in this province? When will the government take steps to implement all 20 of the recommendations in the recent review of the Children and Family Services Act? I believe there's legislation that this is reviewed every year, but there's no legislation saying what the government does with this review. Recommendations come in every year, after reviewing the Act, but no legislation around implementing recommendations, so it's curious that this is the one recommendation that is being moved forward so inappropriately.

Additionally, will this government take steps to strengthen enforcement of emergency protection orders - not just being reactive - actual preventive measures? Which of the resources that are less than what they were last year are being put forward to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in our province and the people working so hard - working tirelessly - to ensure that those most vulnerable in our province are being supported in the best way that they can?

Social workers spread themselves thin. They care so deeply about the work that they do and are so passionate about the supports that they provide, but with the changes coming this year, we're seeing not only are their regulations and the way their profession is regulated being completely dismantled without any type of consultation but also fewer resources to go around to support them.

[Page 2605]

I've made myself clear in what we think about this. There is some great stuff in this bill. There really is. I will highlight what we think is so great.

The changes to the publication ban on children, involving the family court proceedings, are extended to social media after death. That's fantastic - maybe a few years too late - but grateful to have it. Clarification is provided to ensure that anyone found guilty of an offence against a child, even when an absolute or conditional discharge has been given, will be entered on the Child Abuse Register. That's excellent. That's a great change.

Matching the practice with the legislation that allows children aging out of the child welfare system to formally continue to receive services on a regular basis, that's great. We know that has already been the case in practice, but it is great to see that it is now formal in legislation so that it is not up to the discretion of anyone, whether one child or the other gets the supports that they need as they are aging out of the system.

There could have been more. If the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers were consulted - they're intimately familiar with how this act is translating on the ground and in people's lives - they would have asked for a more preventive approach, but I'm not sure. I would love to hear maybe a formal statement from the government about their actual feelings towards consultation.

The emergency protections order now lasting for up to a year, up from 30 days - again, this is a win. This is great. While more resources should be put in place to ensure that those responsible for making those emergency protection orders, such as judges and peace officers, have the education and tools, particularly being trauma-informed - that's another grant that has been cut under this new budget, but I digress - that they have the tools they need to keep survivors safe. It could have been better, but we'll take this as a win.

What's not a win is lumping these great things in with the changes being made to social workers. The very least that could have happened is a heads-up to the College of Social Workers, a memo to the social workers working in the department that this change is coming. Unfortunately, here we are having it all together - the great and the bad - so that it can be used as a move; some type of campaign sometime in the future talking about how so-and-so did not support this great change we had for youth, and they did not support this great change we had to survivors of gender-based violence. The reality is that what we are not supporting is changes made to the regulation of social workers without any type of consultation or, at the very least, a heads-up that this is coming and you should know.

What we would love to hear is a direct answer to the question of why the department did not work with or consult the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, when making this change. Again, it's basic decency to let the people who are being impacted the most know that changes are coming into place.

[Page 2606]

With that, Speaker, I'll take my seat.

THE SPEAKER « » : Earlier when you were talking, you quoted from one or two different things. Please table them. Thank you so much.

The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : I'm pleased to rise in my place to speak on second reading of Bill No. 201. I appreciate the comments from my colleague. An important message around consultation is always key when you are doing this. The earlier you do that, the better. The more you can include stakeholders, the better. I just want to speak for a few minutes. At this stage, the second reading is about the principle of the bill and about ensuring that we take the time to carefully examine both its intent and its potential consequences.

[7:30 p.m.]

Upon first reading, this bill seems well intentioned towards protecting vulnerable Nova Scotians. We are glad to see important changes to how communication and publication is handled in the modern world. It is important that we include social media in our laws and recognize the impact that it's having. Protecting children affected by crime, including after legal proceedings have finished up, is extremely important work. The bill also deals with changes that affect the regulation of a profession that plays a critical role in supporting vulnerable Nova Scotians.

Social workers are often on the front lines, supporting children, families, seniors, and individuals in crisis, and the framework that governs their work must be approached with care. The Public Bills Committee portion of this is going to be critical, especially if social workers are feeling that their voice wasn't heard in the development of the bill. We know that the professional regulation exists first and foremost to protect the public interest. In Nova Scotia, the current framework has evolved over decades, with amendments historically informed by input from the profession itself and stakeholders who understand realities of practice.

What has raised concern in this instance is it is not simply the content of the legislative change but the process by which it has been brought forward. Reporting has indicated that social workers feel concerned that this legislation was introduced without prior notice or meaningful consultation. That concern is significant. Good public policy, particularly in areas involving professional regulation, depends on collaboration between governments, regulators, and practitioners.

The Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has emphasized that collaborative approaches consistently lead to better outcomes and fewer unintended consequences. When that collaboration does not occur, there's a real risk that important perspectives are missed. That can include impacts on public safety, accountability mechanisms, and the ability of regulators to oversee professional standards. These are not abstract concerns. They go directly to how Nova Scotians are protected when they access services and how confidence in the system is maintained. That is why the Public Bills Committee process will be so important for this bill. It will provide an opportunity for social workers, regulators, experts, and members of the public to share their perspective directly with legislators.

[Page 2607]

I am particularly interested in hearing how this bill may affect professional oversight and accountability, whether there are gaps that need to be addressed through amendment, and how we can ensure that any legislative changes continue to prioritize the protection of vulnerable Nova Scotians. This is an opportunity to reinforce a broader principle: that meaningful consultation should not be an afterthought in the legislative process; it should be foundational to the legislative process. When stakeholders are engaged early, legislation is stronger, more effective, and more widely accepted. When they are not, we risk creating uncertainty and undermining confidence, even where the policy intent may be well-meaning.

I look forward to hearing directly from presenters at Public Bills Committee, carefully considering their input, and working constructively to ensure that any final legislation reflects both sound policy and a robust consultation process.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I'm pleased to rise and speak to Bill No. 201, the Justice and Social Services Act. I want to thank the minister for speaking to this bill at the opening. I think it's mostly housekeeping and updating the legislation, and a lot of that is really good, as some of my colleagues have said and as we'll go through again.

I want to say we're here for a good time, not a long time. I don't know if it's a good time - we could argue about that - but we're here for an important time. Notwithstanding the Premier's comments yesterday that this isn't his most important job, this is my most important job. My most important job is making sure that the legislation that moves through this House serves Nova Scotians in the best possible way. That is doubly so when it is legislation that impacts vulnerable Nova Scotians, which this does.

I'll start with the end, which is that we want to see Part 4 severed from this bill. This is an omnibus bill, as almost all of the legislation that comes through this House is, and most of it is really good.

Part 4 is controversial. The College of Social Workers has a ton of concerns. We have laid some out. We will continue to do that. They have said that they were not consulted. They need to be consulted. We will pass this bill right now if Part 4 is severed from the bill. The rest of the bill is good, but that provision is really problematic, and I'll come back to that in a minute.

[Page 2608]

This Act, as I said, is an omnibus piece of legislation. In plain English, it covers a lot of different Acts and it covers a lot of different departments. I see a box on the Justice Minister's desk, so maybe we'll hear from him on the relevant areas, which I look forward to. In addition to the Department of Justice, this bill covers the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, which we heard from the minister, as well as the Department of Health and Wellness.

In the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, we see some changes made to reflect a review of the Child and Family Services Act. We welcome publication bans on children involved in family court proceedings. We know that social media is a terrible and tricky beast to tame. Any efforts that we can make in this Chamber to do that, particularly in service of vulnerable people are welcomed. I think I speak for all members of this House when I say that no one should be shamed or put in danger because of what goes on social media.

I think also the provision around the Child Abuse Register is incredibly important. We need to know when abusers are in communities, and we need families to be aware of that. The publication requirements, et cetera, that go with that registry are vital for keeping people safe, for keeping kids safe. We need to keep kids safe. We have too many horrible stories all the time of the ways in which we fail children.

As I said, this is why this legislation is so important, because this sets up the framework that is the guardrail to stop us from failing children. We take this incredibly seriously. We take our responsibility - to read this, to understand it, to debate it, and most importantly to make sure that Nova Scotians understand it - very seriously.

The offering care to children aging out, I do want to give a rare shoutout here to the Government House Leader. I know that this is something that was very important to him when he was in that portfolio. It's certainly something that I have had lots of direct engagement about with my own constituents who have aged out of care.

Many MLAs will have heard stories of kids leaving group homes with a black garbage bag and being told, "Good luck." Those are kids who are in the care of the minister. Just like none of us would send our own children out the door with a garbage bag at the age of 18, the children who are in the care of the province shouldn't have to experience that either. This is an extraordinarily important and welcome change, and it's something that will help us to support these Nova Scotians to help them get a leg up, to help them find employment and hopefully education. There has been really good work that has happened in the last few years around university tuition for children who have been in care. I think there's probably still some work to do, but this is a really welcome step, as well as aging out later. I think that's really, really positive.

[Page 2609]

I think there are more supports that could be offered. I know I have worked with a lot of social workers and organizations and group homes in my own constituency who really often point to the need for more preventative action to be taken. There's a lot of conversation right now around what's going on in the Wood Street facility. There's a lawsuit. I think if we're doing our job right, no kid has to end up there.

If we're doing our job right, we're offering supports to children and families so that we don't even have to discuss if we have the right kind of facility. Kids don't end up there. That's really about that preventive approach.

This is something that in fact the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has advocated for, for a long, long time. There's a lot more to be said. I think there's a lot more to be done. But as I say, we do broadly welcome that basket of changes.

In Justice, notwithstanding the fact that we have seen cuts to some of the Mass Casualty Commission recommendations in this budget, we've seen cuts to the Domestic Violence Court Program. We are pleased in this legislation to see the extension of emergency protection orders.

Again, as MLAs we have a pretty unique and kind of a sacred trust, I would say, with Nova Scotians. People come to us in their darkest hour. Sometimes we get to go to 100^th birthday parties and that's good. People come to us when they're fleeing violence. People come to us when their children are being apprehended. People come to us when they are unhoused and unable to find housing.

When people come to us and they fear for their life, it is one of the most difficult things to deal with as an MLA because we can't really keep them safe. We can try, we can navigate to law enforcement, which we do. We can navigate to incredible community supports, which we do, places like transition houses and Bryony House, Alice House, Adsum for Women and Children, and all of the amazing organizations.

I have had the occasion to work closely with all those organizations, and I'll be the first to say that we need to do more. I would say that, again, cutting the Domestic Violence Court Program while extending these orders doesn't make any sense.

I would urge the Justice Minister to reconsider that allocation of funding in this budget. If the description of the 13 pages of cuts we received is that these are discretionary things, funding for that Domestic Violence Court Program is not discretionary, Speaker. It is as important as this housekeeping provision. We need to know we can get those emergency protection orders to begin with.

We still have a long way to go. I think we have lots of really good partnerships, actually, with social service organizations and law enforcement and others. I think of a test program when we're talking about human trafficking and others, where we do have specialized law enforcement who are able to work and respond but we still have a lot of gaps. We still have a lot of ways in which we are not trauma informed, in which law enforcement is not properly trained.

[Page 2610]

I was at a shelter for women fleeing violence this year. They have incredibly extreme protocols because when women come, they are often being chased. There are people looking for them. It is not unusual that someone will come to their facility and bang on the door and throw things at the windows. They have to have different kinds of windows and special safety on the doors.

The director told me a story of one night that it got so bad when a man was trying to find his former partner who had fled, that she called police, and they said that police are the last resort because we know that's temporary. What we're offering is a bed and a shelter. It took them an hour and a half to attend. I'm not casting aspersions on the HRP or anyone. I'm saying that we're not coordinated enough in how we deal with this.

[7:45 p.m.]

I think that this is what we have in terms of a road map from the Mass Casualty Commission. It's a way forward - that we think about this, that we are trauma informed, and that we are preventing terrible things from happening.

So again, the expansion of emergency protection orders is good. Let's make sure that victims can actually get them. And let's make sure that everyone on the front lines has the proper training and funding to be able to do the work they need to do.

So, now we come to the Department of Health and Wellness, Part IV of the bill. We talked about the Regulated Health Professions Act at length when it came in, and I will leave it to my colleagues who know more about that bill. Suffice it to say, I think it's going okay. So, this isn't about the Regulated Health Professions Act. This is about what we're doing right now, which is process.

The Regulated Health Professions Act needs to be updated. We know that the Mass Casualty Commission, in fact, in Turning the Tide Together, recommended that caring professions, that the regulations governing them should be standardized. However, the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers found out about this legislation when it was tabled.

This is a regulated health profession. This is a regulatory body, and some of us - a couple of us in my caucus, at least two or three, many of you, I'm sure, have worked for regulatory bodies. Their mission is to protect the public. It's sort of a misnomer. They're regulating social workers in the public interest. That's what they do. There's nothing to suggest that this is not a professional group. There's nothing to suggest, at least nothing on the public record or that I'm aware of, that this group was mismanaged.

[Page 2611]

So, it is insulting, to say the least, that this group would find out that their regulatory power was being removed, and that the profession was being fundamentally changed, from a press release about a bill that was going to be debated, 12 hours after - or whatever, 24, I've lost track of time in this place - since it was introduced. If it wasn't for that body alerting their members, certainly nobody would know, Speaker. Certainly no one would know.

My colleague, the member for Fairview-Clayton Park, asked the question, why? And I'm going to quote from the same Facebook post from a social worker that she quoted from. I will quote the part of that - and it's been tabled, I think. If not, I can table it. It says:

If I speak to close family and friends about my job for any length of time, sooner or later I tell them how grateful I am for the clause in the Social Workers Act that explicitly allows the regulator to advocate for the public good. Regulatory coms is interesting and challenging, but the advocacy woven throughout has been what makes it satisfying. Perhaps I have been a little spoiled by how closely my values align with this organization, and how it's constantly striving to both prevent and repair the harms done within its scope.

I think that's why, Speaker, there are very few organizations in this province that don't rely in some way on public funding, to the extent that they have been told to be quiet by this government. We talk to stakeholders every single day who say, "I disagree with this. This is hard on my community. This is hard on my neighbours. This is hard on my workplace, but I can't say anything or I'm worried I'll get fired." Or "I'm worried I'll lose my funding." Or "I'm worried I'll get a slap on the wrist." And I think that's what's happening here. Otherwise, why not consult?

Consultation can take many forms. It can be a phone call, it can be an email, it can be a focus group. None of those things happen. The Act needed to be updated. This whole move might be exactly the right thing to do, but without consultation with this body and a legislation that impacts two of, I think, this government's current biggest critics - the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers and the NSGEU - we have to ask is it because these are organizations that are openly and vocally critical of the things they disagree with? What we hear from civil servants every day is that they are told not to criticize, not to post, not to write letters, that they are at risk of losing their job if they do so.

That is not the case with people who work for the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers. They can advocate and I'll take it one step further. They have advocated for a lot of things, but in particular, for a child and youth advocate. They have advocated for a child and youth advocate for at least a decade. Since I came into this role, this body has been advocating, and I want to express excitement that some version of that is happening. I'm not sure if it's the right version. I'm not sure what can be done with the budget that's been allocated but I'm glad there's movement.

[Page 2612]

I think, Speaker, that the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, if they're not dissolved by this Act, is going to have a lot to say about how that office is formed. I think they're going to have a lot to say about the powers - of course, what we have advocated for, what they have advocated for, is an independent youth advocate who is an officer of the Legislature. That's not what's happening as far as - I mean, I hope, prove me wrong - but I don't think that's what happening. That is what they have advocated for and that doesn't seem like what we're going to see. It's actually not at all clear what we're going to see. I think it's easier not to have that voice. I do, and I think that's part of the pattern.

We don't have independent Crown corporations anymore. We don't have independent university presidents anymore. We don't have independent community college presidents anymore. Everything folds up to Executive Council and the Premier's Office - not these guys.

Here are some of the things that they say because they are in a position to say it. This was a press release that came out, I think, two days ago and I'll table it after I read it. It's entitled Childhood on the brink: A response to the 2026-2027 provincial budget. I'd like to read it into the record because this may have been what ended up getting him terminated.

The recently tabled provincial budget by [the Premier]'s government is a stark reminder of the policy choices that continue to fail Nova Scotia's most vulnerable, our children. Instead of addressing the systemic issues driving child poverty, the budget doubles down on austerity measures that deepen inequality and jeopardize the province's long-term economic and social health.

The announcement of funding for a new provincial child and youth advocate is a welcome and long-overdue step to protect the rights and well-being of vulnerable children and families. However, this initiative is undermined by the very budget that introduced it. Urgent action is needed to ensure the office is swiftly established and adequately resourced to meet the growing needs of children and families - needs that have been exacerbated by the government's broader policy decisions.

While the provincial budget includes an allocated $300,000 in funding, this is a mere fraction of the $6.5 million recommended for annual operating expenses.

I'm going to pause and remind everyone that the child and youth advocate exists to keep children safe and alive - not discretionary.

[Page 2613]

Without sufficient resources, this office cannot fulfill its potential as a lifeline for vulnerable children and families.

The creation of this office is a critical step forward, but it cannot succeed in isolation. The broader context of the budget reveals a troubling pattern of rising inequality and systemic neglect. Cuts to social programs, inadequate investments in housing and food security, and a lack of meaningful support for families leave children and families more vulnerable than ever.

This budget is not just a missed opportunity - it's a deliberate choice to prioritize austerity over equity, leaving Nova Scotia's most vulnerable to bear the brunt of its consequences.

In 1989, Canada vowed to eliminate child poverty by 2000. Fast forward to 2026, and Nova Scotia remains one of the worst-performing provinces in the country, with over 40,000 children - nearly one in four - living below the low-income threshold.

This budget does little to change that trajectory. Instead of bold, transformative action, it offers austerity which inevitably will be leaving families to struggle in a system that prioritizes profits over people.

Child poverty is not just a moral failing; it's an economic disaster. The cost of poverty in Nova Scotia is estimated at $2.4 billion annually [more than the provincial deficit], draining resources through lost productivity, increased healthcare costs, and the strain on social services. Yet, this budget continues to underfund critical social programs, perpetuating a cycle of poverty that will cost the province far more in the long run. The government's refusal to meaningfully invest in upstream solutions, like affordable housing, universal childcare, and income supports, ensures that these costs will only grow.

The budget's failure to address systemic inequities disproportionately harms lone-parent households, racialized communities, and newcomers. Nearly 60% of children in lone-parent families live in poverty, while racialized children face poverty rates twice as high as their non-immigrant peers.

This is a good time to mention that this budget cuts the grant to the Nova Scotia Association of Black Social Workers - it cuts the grant - but you won't hear these guys complaining about it after this session.

[Page 2614]

These are not just abstract statistics, they reflect the harsh realities of families forced to make impossible choices, such as deciding between paying rent or buying groceries, heating their homes or feeding their children. Despite this, the budget offers no meaningful relief for these vulnerable groups, instead advancing policies that widen the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

The situation is further compounded by the government's plan to cut the public service by 5%, slash $130 million in program grants, and reduce $1 billion in government expenditures over the next four years. These cuts will disproportionately impact the same vulnerable groups, particularly as no clear political directive has been provided on where or how these reductions will be made. This lack of planning means there has been no assessment of how these cuts will affect core services, leaving critical programs at risk.

The predominantly female workforce in public service roles will bear the brunt of these reductions, further entrenching inequality. No amount of resource extraction can "fix" this issue. In fact, jurisdictions that rely heavily on resource extraction often see greater inequality, as the benefits are concentrated among the wealthy while vulnerable communities are left behind. [ . . . ]

This budget is a glaring example of how poverty is perpetuated by deliberate political choices. By prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthy and doubling down on resource extraction over meaningful investments in social infrastructure, the government is actively choosing to deepen inequality.

The budget's failure to address systemic inequities is evident in its refusal to raise income assistance to livable levels. Lone-parent families, who are already four times more likely to live in poverty, will continue to face impossible choices as they remain thousands of dollars below the low-income threshold.

[8:00 p.m.]

Speaker, these families live in every single one of our constituencies. They're in every single one of our offices. They are asking for our support.

Nova Scotia spends just $1,300 per capita on social protection - less than half the national average and the lowest of any province in Canada. This chronic underfunding of social programs is a policy choice that has cascading consequences across the entire system. By starving social supports, the government is not saving money; it is simply shifting the costs to emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and food banks -

[Page 2615]

- although food supports are also being cut.

I'm going to skip to the end. It's called "A roadmap for change."

The path forward is clear, and it starts with bold, courageous policy action. The Nova Scotia Alternative Budget 2026 offers a blueprint for a more equitable and sustainable future. [. . . ]

The time to act is now. [ . . . ] Nova Scotia's children cannot wait. It's time for leadership that prioritizes people over profits, equity over austerity, and long-term prosperity over short-term gains. The choices we make today will define the future of our province. Let's choose a future where every child has the opportunity to thrive.

This is a very critical document, and these aren't my words. These are the words of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, and they're pretty scathing. It is imperative that this government can hear feedback that's scathing and let it be. But we have seen over and over again that it is more and more difficult for expert professional voices to speak honestly in public without fear of retribution in the form of job loss or in the form of funding cuts.

I really think this should give us pause. It should give us pause that this document came out. There was no engagement. There was no conversation. There wasn't even a heads-up. Then a bill came in saying: Your organization is not really going to exist anymore - because now they can't publish these.

Is it a good idea that the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers is enveloped in the Regulated Health Professions Act? Maybe. I don't know, but I think we need to ask the question. I think we need to engage with those social workers.

I think we need to look at all of the recommendations that have come out about the Children and Family Services Act, some of which are here and many of which aren't. This is the government's own review - a review of the Nova Scotia Children and Family Services Act. Presumably, this legislation is responding to this review that this government conducted, but this isn't all contained in this bill and there was no engagement with social workers.

I want to say one last thing about this, which is that social work is a really hard job - like, a really, really hard job. I spoke earlier about how MLAs see people on some of their darkest days. What we see doesn't hold a candle to what social workers see every day. These are people who choose a livelihood that puts them in the middle of heartbreak all the time.

[Page 2616]

I don't know if this government is getting the emails that we are, but I will tell you that the public service is demoralized, angry, and upset. We hear over and over again that we're not going to see frontline cuts, but cuts in these spaces - cuts in the Nova Scotia Association of Black Social Workers - that's a frontline cut.

There's another one that I just want to pull up here. Indigenous Social Work Practice Conference - cut. Child and Family Wellbeing administration - cut. There's a cut to family resource centres. Parenting Journey - that program is the most life-saving program I have encountered as an MLA. Families are having a hard time before a child is apprehended. Social workers and family workers go into the home and they work with the family. They help make them whole and they help parents figure it out. They keep kids safe, and they save the Province a lot of money. What happens if it doesn't work? A child is apprehended. A parent is homeless. Those are terrible and expensive eventualities that we can avoid with upstream funding.

We already see a lot of turnover in social work. It's one of the biggest complaints that we get: "I had a worker, now I have another worker, now I have another worker. They're so busy and I don't know who they are and I don't get to talk to them." This is going to make it a lot worse. Again, not necessarily because of what the bill enables, but because it is breeding distrust, because it is breeding fear, because this is already a workforce that has been told that some of them are going to lose their jobs. This is already a workforce that has been told that their entire departments might be restructured.

Again, our ask for this bill is simple: Take it back, sever Part 4, consult with the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, bring it back. I think it's a reasonable ask. The rest of the bill is fine. We'll hear from people at Public Bills. We will get some public feedback on what's going on, but why not? I have to ask the question: What is this government afraid of?

This is a super majority. Every bill that comes through this House will pass. Every policy this government introduces will go forward. If the government thinks it's a good bill, engage with stakeholders. Make it better, take the time, do the work. Part 4 of this bill is an insult to social workers. It's an insult to the families who rely on them. It's an insult to a nonprofit organization that has worked tirelessly for decades protecting the most vulnerable children in our province.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minster of Health and Wellness.

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : I'm pleased to rise and talk a little bit about this bill. I think it's really important to ground ourselves in a bit of best practice and understand what it is to be a regulated health care professional. There are currently 21 regulated health professionals in our province and recently, within the last couple of years, were all taken under an Act. That really does support all of the regulated professions. In fact, self-regulation, as a profession, is a privilege. It is not a right. It is not afforded to everyone.

[Page 2617]

We have a number of professionals we work alongside, and it isn't part of their mandate. The primary function of a college is public protection - absolutely public protection.

These are some of the responsibilities that fall under a college: creating standards and providing licences and ensuring that the scope of practice is keeping up with the times. It sets a code of ethics. Really, your standards of practice and your code of ethics are your compass as a regulated health professional.

We look at quality assurance, so we do need an opportunity for people to be able to reach in. Some colleges are big and some colleges are small, and self-regulation comes with a lot of responsibility. We need to make sure that there is a quality assurance program to make sure that that self-regulation is the primary focus.

It also regulates titles. As an example, if I don't pay my dues every year, or if I do not adhere to my standards of practice, I cannot write "RN" after my name. I'm a nurse forever, but a registered nurse is someone who meets the criteria associated with the college. I pay my dues to that regulatory body, and as a result, my title is protected as a registered nurse. Nobody else can use that if they are not in good standing or if they are not registered.

They are my Big Brother. They set my standards of practice. They tell me how I should conduct myself. In the event I cause harm or stray from my standards of practice or my code of ethics, I know that the public - any member of the public - can complain, and those individuals will meet with me about my practice. They'll meet with me about the complaint, and in the event that I am a danger or I have acted outside of my scope of practice, they actually can put conditions or take my licence. The primary role of a college is to protect the public.

A professional association is there to support the profession. They are there to do work of advocacy. They are there to talk about how the profession can advance. We see it. We see it with physiotherapy. We have a College of Physiotherapists in this province and we have an association. Those two groups meet on a regular basis and they advance, where it's appropriate, the profession together, but they are not the same thing. The college regulates physiotherapists and the association advocates for them.

For the Opposition, who constantly accuses us of conflict of interest somehow cannot see the conflict that arises when you think you can regulate yourself and your colleagues and also advocate for the profession at the same time. No other jurisdiction in Canada currently has that model.

[Page 2618]

Every other social work organization has a regulatory body. I have the Canadian Nurses Association. That is not my regulator. The physicians have the Canadian Medical Association. It is not their regulator. They have a College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Social workers are incredibly valuable. The reason they're coming in under this Act is because we do value them as members of health care professionals. You can look at health across the entire spectrum. The work that happens in social services is essential to a child and family's well-being and health. It is not only upstream but also intervening for safety reasons. Absolutely, that is a safety issue. Absolutely, that is what a health professional would do. They come in - they come in under this profession, or under this regulated Act, and they are equivalent. They are no different. Although we have unique skill sets, and a nurse is different than a doctor, and a doctor's different than a physio, and a physio is different than a paramedic - we are all regulated licensed professionals. We should be proud of that. We should protect it jealously, because not every profession is afforded that privilege.

My association leads the charge for nursing. It says how we can impact the system, says all of the things, but they cannot be both. At least 20 years ago, the Registered Nursing Association of Nova Scotia separated their role because they recognized the conflict that they were under, knowing they were an association for trying to advance nursing while at the same time trying to regulate the nurses they were there to ensure that they were safe and protect the public from.

This is not punitive in any way. This is a recognition of the incredible work social workers do. It is a recognition of how important they are on our health care teams, in community, in health homes, and in hospitals. The social workers already belong to the Regulated Health Professions Network council and I believe the ED - the current ED - actually chaired that at one point. I would assume from being the chair of an organization such as that, that association would see themselves as a health care provider.

[8:15 p.m.]

I want to assure social workers, this is actually a validation of the work they do. Coming in under the Regulated Health Professionals Act is going to allow them to change their scope of practice through their college just by simply working with the Department of Health and Wellness and going through an OIC rather than opening legislation and being kind of stuck at the whim of whether or not any sitting government wants to open the Legislative Act. It is going to allow them to be more agile. It is going to allow them to project more confidence into the public.

The association has an incredible role. I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out. It's not going to come into effect until 2027. We are going to work on those regulations. I believe truly that the folks who work at the association should have and did expect this to eventually happen. That is the understanding that we had when they were notified prior to this legislation being tabled.

[Page 2619]

We want to welcome them into this incredible Act. They're already on a Regulated Health Professionals network council. The association has been a very important member of that team. They will continue to be an important member under this Act.

We look forward to having them under. We look forward to working with them and setting their regulations. I can ensure all the social workers, this is absolutely an important step forward in modernizing their regulations and modernizing their legislation. We truly look forward to working with them.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Armdale.

ROD WILSON « » : Thank you, Minister Thompson, although you stole some of my thunder. I have worked in the regulatory world in a couple of capacities. Besides being a self-regulated health professional, I also worked at the College of Physicians and Surgeons for twelve years - six on staff and six in college. Then I also spent five years with the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society as a public member.

The bane of my existence, which I never thought I would be speaking about in the Legislature is when I was doing my master's in health admin, I had to do a 40-page review, a self-regulation judicial review around the world. Who knew 10 years later or longer this would come back to haunt me.

I do agree with a lot of things the minister said, but I want to start first saying I think this bill is great in many ways, and I applaud the minister and the staff for bringing it forward.

Anything we could do to protect - I do think there's time somewhere along the way and ask that we look at - I don't know what the answer is - how do we protect our children from social media? That's another bill another time, perhaps. I know MLA Rankin has spoken to that.

Again, excellent parts of this . . .

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. This has been twice now. You're not allowed to say people's names in the House. The first one I was just going to remind you afterwards, but now it's twice. Please, just say fellow member or whatever you would like, but do not name members. Thank you.

The honourable member for Halifax Armdale.

[Page 2620]

ROD WILSON « » : Minister Thompson is absolutely correct. Self-regulation - Minister of Health and Wellness, sorry.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. Third time's trying time. "Minister of Health and Wellness" would be fine. (Interruption)

I know, it is. That's why we're all kind of chuckling and having fun here. We have all done it, and I've done it a few times.

The honourable member for Halifax Armdale.

ROD WILSON « » : The honourable Minister of Health and Wellness and I agree on many things. Not all things, but one point that the minister has made is that self-regulation is a privilege and with that privilege comes the obligation to uphold the best standards and update the best standards you can.

Again, the minister stole my thunder, so I won't go on to that and lecture you about what colleges do. We come from the same school of thought, and actually at one point the same profession. What I do question is why not consult, and why now?

When I was working in self regulatory, we always knew, and one of my mentors, Marjorie Hickey, always said that if we don't do it well it only takes the stroke of a pen to lose self-regulation. That was a good mantra to think about. We've got to do the best to deal with the public. We need to update ourselves. So I ask: Is there a reason for this other than the recommendation? Why now? It may be it is a route to go but I think it could have been done better, and better in a couple of ways.

When I did my paper - which is coming back to haunt me - I looked at review, just other jurisdictions that had more government oversight. For example, in the U.K. because of some of the mass murders by physicians, the U.K. actually took over the regulation of physicians. So you registered with the government - a similar model in New Zealand and Australia. Things that came about of that is that oversight with government slows things down. It was more expensive and, at some points, government said I don't have the expertise to do this even in partnership with the profession and there was a decrease in satisfaction both with people who used the profession and by professional members themselves. They felt devalued from being a self-regulatory body to having an oversight. I think that's important here because child protection, as someone has mentioned, is a sub-specialty of social work and it's really tough. It's a sub-specialist really and it's a skill set that is hard to acquire. Also, it has a high attrition rate because of the nature of it, because it's difficult, challenging work.

As the Leader of the Opposition said, maybe this does need to change, but I think there's value in asking questions, and I'll speak to whether it's a model to use for this. In 2011, we didn't feel that the medical model - which I think was last published in 1982 - was valid anymore. It's just the way that the self-regulation was being administered. So we went to market to see if we need a new Medical Act. We didn't want to be regulated by government. No doctor does. We did a survey across the country - across the world - and looked at models. We asked our members what they thought of it. Of course, most members think that the regulatory body is just to take your licence, take your money, and then discipline you. We asked who would be best to develop the standards and, most importantly, we went public because, as the Minister of Health and Wellness has stated, the role of self-regulation is to protect the public and I would argue that the professions are the best ones to determine that.

[Page 2621]

When I sat on the Barristers' Society on the Complaints Investigation Committee reviewing complaints against lawyers, even as a physician who thought I knew everything and even knowing the regulatory process, I didn't understand the practice of law. If the lawyer stole money, that was a no brainer. That was probably not a good thing to do. But the actual practice of law was so intricate that I spent five years asking: Is this acceptable? Does this meet current standards? It was really a huge learning curve.

Again, this bill has so many excellent parts. I just wonder whether it could be better if there was time for more consultation with the profession involved. Social work - we are short across the province. There's a high burnout rate among child protection. There's an obligation - not an obligation - but it's got to be very demoralizing to wake up and just get told that you no longer have the ability or, even if you're not saying that, the perception is you no longer have the ability to self-regulate.

So I want to ask again: Why is the government doing this? Has it thought of its impact? Is there a rush to do that part of the bill that maybe things do change? I think there's an opportunity here to get a really good change out of it by consulting people across the board, not only members of the profession, members who actually educate social workers, and also the community.

Consultation takes time. It takes patience, but as a mentor once said to me, "When you skip process, particularly in consultation, it often comes back to bite you in the butt." I'm wondering if that's a little bit what is happening here.

Also, one of my other mentors, who was a deputy minister of Justice in the past, said governments tend to either overreact or underreact, so I'm just trying to figure out where we are here in this game.

So, an excellent bill. Thank you, Minister, for speaking to it and thank you Minister of Opportunities and Social Development for bringing it forward. But I do say: Could we actually engage and think about it a bit more thoroughly. Is there a rush to do this?

I also want to leave you with the comment that another mentor of mine, Crane Stookey from the Lunenburg Nova Scotia Sea School said to me, "Authority lies where the information is." I don't know anything about the practice of social work, particularly child protection, so I think I have an obligation, if I was asked to look at this, to go out and learn more not only about what's the skill set now, but what's the skill set of the future.

[Page 2622]

I would suggest perhaps a little bit more consultation, a little bit more consideration. Think about how demoralizing it would be if any of us in a regulated profession to have never been asked and just hear about it on the news or get the email today. Is that really the climate we want in Nova Scotia when we're trying to recruit everybody - social workers, dentists? I think a kinder, gentler approach to consultation might serve government well.

It doesn't mean that this shouldn't happen, but I think the time put into that consultation would enhance an already big bill, versus slowing it down - or not even slowing it down but changing the perception of the intention of this bill. Without that consultation saying, "These are the concerns we have, this is why we want to hear your opinion, we want to change it," would serve both the government well, perhaps in its perceptions - especially this week - but also make a bill much better and much more acceptable and make it a win-win situation. Again, child protection is such a difficult job for everyone involved.

The social workers are few and far between and we want them to come to Nova Scotia. We want them to stay. We want social workers in child protection to feel valued, wanted, and protected. A little bit of consideration on hearing from the ministers - "these are our concerns, this is what we're thinking about, what are your thoughts" - may go a long way in making a win-win not only for the social workers but for the families who depend on those social workers.

I wish I could trump - the bad verb - the Minister of Health and Wellness on a story about self-regulation, but she beat me to it. I just asked to speak more about consultation, collaboration. It will not hurt; it will actually help and it would really put a nice bow on this bill at this point. There's a huge open gap as to what the intention of this government is. Why are you doing it at this point in time without any consultation? Those are the questions that I think really need to be answered that could improve this bill a lot.

I asked you to think about what you could do better, what this bill could do better. It's already a good bill; what could it take to make it excellent? I think consultation with the profession that's under stress, short staffed, working hard, and would really appreciate government coming out and saying, "What do you think about this?"

[8:30 p.m.]

In our work as MLAs, when we ask people what their thoughts are, "what's on your mind," when I knock on the door, and say, "hey, what are you thinking about?" they are like, "this is fantastic that you'd come out and ask for my opinion," and I think it's a lesson we could all learn from to make this bill better.

[Page 2623]

That's kind of my advice or thoughts for consideration - just a little more consultation in a stressful field, stressful job, that didn't feel they were valued enough to even be asked as to what the future should look like. I hope that resonates with you that it is a good bill, but there is such a huge opportunity for improvement. It won't be expensive; it won't be time-consuming. Everybody could win from consultation - than what we are potentially going to see.

What have you got to lose by consultation with the profession?

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE « » : I am going to touch on a few issues with regard to this bill and that is because it's an omnibus bill. There are a few issues to touch on, so there we go, and I am always happy to rise and talk about seeking better outcomes for children and youth in our province.

I think that, as well, we know that the Children and Family Services Act is really important. It is a significant piece of legislation and it is supposed to guide and protect young people from harm and bolster the health and well-being of communities and families across Nova Scotia, but the reality falls short of that vision in terms of how we implement that in Nova Scotia. I think it is absolutely essential that the age is extended and that we write that into law in terms of making sure that folks, as we say, aging out of care have that extended runway into adulthood.

I think that we also could do a lot better for those young people between ages 19 and 25 if we did a lot better job early on. The Children and Family Services Act has a mandatory review process. This review process is way better than the Liberal one from 2020, so that's awesome. At that point, the then-Liberal minister picked and chose a couple of different areas to review that were not related to the issues that community members were raising and blamed it on COVID. A good full review, as provided for in the Act, is really important. I just have some things to say about how we can do better even before young people end up at ages 18 and 19, and that sort of thing.

I also just want to note, too, that if we really had a real child and youth advocate - and we are not convinced the office for children and youth is going to be the same thing, but a true child and youth advocate - that really they could do a lot of this work for us. They would do that in conjunction with communities and they would also do that in conjunction with youth. In particular, when thinking about the aging-out process and the extension of services, I think young people have a right to be heard under age 18, and they certainly have a right to be heard over age 18.

I would love to hear from the minister how that youth engagement is happening in the department and how it will be taken into consideration in this work.

[Page 2624]

As I said, I think that extending services and making that law for young people from ages 19 to 25 is really important, but we need to really be thinking about the upstream investments that we are making. I think the minister referred to that: the social determinants of health. If you have someone actually who is aging out of child welfare without a placement or a family, at that point I would also say that in many ways the system has failed.

The system is going to work really well when hardly any children need to be removed from their families and live in foster homes or in group settings. I just want to be clear, I have three former youth in care living in my home right now and I have fostered since becoming an MLA, so I also believe in the necessity of the system. I get that, but my dream is that we support families so well that generation after generation, every family is successful.

On the very rare occasion where there is intervention required, then we have different ways of doing it that don't involve ripping families apart. I definitely have a dreamy scenario, but I think, honestly, children have a right to that dream. I think the other thing that concerns me when we think about this work and extending from 19 to 25 is actually that we have very little data. We actually have very little understanding of how children and youth are doing in Nova Scotia.

There was - just before I was elected, and I think published after I was elected - an effort called, One Chance to Be a Child. This involved Andrew Lynk, who was chief of Pediatrics at the time at the IWK Health Centre, and researchers, youth, youth organizations, really trying to put together an extensive framework of what we know about young people in Nova Scotia. Earlier today I talked about mental health. We don't have the data on mental health to actually know if what we're doing is working. Until we can measure those changes and track those changes, it's hard to know where the investments are needed, how to make the right investments.

I also want to start with a plug for data. The One Chance to Be a Child was also supported by the Department of Health and Wellness. There were senior officials from that meeting with that group. It was intended to be a snapshot that then would be updated. It was intended to really do this heavy lift of all this work to understand children and youth in Nova Scotia, and then it would continue to be updated.

You can check it out. It's still online at onechancens.ca. It's hundreds of pages of report, but I think it's really invaluable information. So, thinking about where I think we need to get it right in child welfare and before young people are actually aging out of child welfare - when you look at the research on good child outcomes, which we actually don't have enough of in Nova Scotia. Although I do know that the Department of Opportunities and Social Development actually did - I think it's still ongoing, or just recently finished - a large study through Dalhousie University, looking at the outcomes of former youth in care, particularly focused on positive protective factors.

[Page 2625]

Often the data we do collect is like: How many young people are arrested? What's the age profile of folks in custody? et cetera; but then we don't go and find the young people who are successful and ask them, "How is it going? Why did that work?" Do some qualitative and quantitative inquiry into what was different for them.

I happen to know that the Department of Opportunities and Social Development has a large project. I think it's close to a million dollars, if I'm not mistaken, and I would love the minister to talk about where that project is at, and how it's informing this work. If we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on research, we should be using it.

In the literature about child welfare and making the path better, key principles such as prevention, early intervention and family preservation are crucial, but time and time again, what hinders that is a lack of necessary resources. Again, as I said, I have this dream where we support families so well that we get out of cycles of intergenerational trauma, we have successful families, and we actually don't need to be thinking about: Why is it that young people who have come out of child welfare aren't successful? And there is a lack of necessary resources.

I think this is also one of the challenges - not just with this government, but with this work in general, and with other governments as well - picking and choosing what we know about child welfare and what we listen to.

Honestly, we could all but eliminate the need for child welfare if families had adequate resources. If you look at the percentage of children who are removed from homes because of neglect - and neglect is usually measured in terms of socioeconomic measures - we could keep a lot of families together if we were providing the right supports. If you look at even the rates of child apprehension during COVID, it actually decreased.

Actually, in Nova Scotia, our rate of child poverty decreased during two years of COVID. Why? Because there were adequate income supports for families, as we know - I'm blanking a little bit about what they were called, but the monthly payments - and really making sure that people could be safe. They could be safe if they couldn't go to work, they could be safe if they couldn't go to school, that people had access to adequate food, and people gave a lot of thought to: How do we connect with everyone, even if we can't connect in person?

It was successful, actually. Child poverty was reduced, and there were fewer apprehensions, but COVID ended and we are still leaving families struggling. Starting from having inadequate income, starting from having insecure housing, a rental system that does not work in this province, people are seeing increased cost - that puts stress on families. You can go look at the stats - the Department of Finance.

[Page 2626]

Also, other things that we pay for that we really should be using, in our analysis, are things like the Department of Finance has a Statistics and Economics division, and they can send you stats every day, folks. You can get an email with some different economic stats. I have to do a plug for this. On child poverty, they can show you that, in fact, our child poverty rate has doubled in the past couple of years. That is the wrong way for that indicator to be going. I don't think anybody in this House wants that indicator to go up.

Even within Nova Scotia, we've had very made-in-Nova-Scotia approaches that have talked about sufficient resources and sufficient services. The Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children Restorative Inquiry highlighted the need for sufficient services to be provided by the Province to foster well-being, including building strong relationships and spiritual and cultural connections. Again, not removing children from their communities and their families.

Like I said, we could do a whole lot. I don't know if anyone has - I won't inquire. I suspect that some people in this room have experience with family breakdown or children being removed from a family. It's terrible. We could decrease that at least by one-third by addressing income inequality. I suspect then, if that were normalized - if it became part of how you expected your life to be in the world - it would just compound and positive outcomes would increase.

[8:45 p.m.]

I'm going to talk about the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers, who have been strong advocates. When I was at Dalhousie and managing a research project and doing my PhD, I was based out of the Dalhousie School of Social Work. I am not a social worker by training but obviously spent a lot of time with social workers and with people training social workers. Part of the magic, I would say, of social work is that it is a reflective process. That is how we train social workers - to go out and deal with really tough situations and then to consider for themselves, for their workplace, for their communities what it means and what could be done differently.

So it is true that the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers has done a lot of this work. They've done a lot of research on how to make things better in this province because, ideally, they would not be having their folks go out and apprehend children.

So a consultation report prepared on behalf of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers highlighted the need for effective strategies to bolster child and family welfare given the current socioeconomic and political conditions. The report stressed the necessity for improved preventive measures. So again, we're going to have the best outcomes when we stabilize support to families and families are not separated.

So improved preventive measures to foster physical and mental health, that help families organize themselves and help families empower themselves to be able to make the changes they need, seek the kind of support they need, and to avoid family separations.

[Page 2627]

There are a whole bunch of things that need to change in the current Act. Again, like I said, I'm really pleased that there was actually a fulsome review, as I understand it. I'm obviously a little more distant from it these days, but I think since its inception, since this new Act was introduced, the Act's presumption of harm provisions have actually disproportionately increased surveillance on volatile families. So rather than actually strengthening family security, encouraging family connection and family stability, it has disproportionately increased surveillance on vulnerable families and exacerbated marginalization rather than providing support.

The amended Act was meant to be prevention-focused because we know that's really important, but when you have an Act - despite whatever objective and intention it has - that's divorced from things like income supports and making sure that we don't have children living in poverty - you know, supports for mental health and parenting and that sort of thing - it's hard for the Act to be fully realized because what it's premised on is that we're going to do all these other things that make life better for families in Nova Scotia.

So what people found is that without real financial investments in social supports for families, and without a systemic capacity to make prevention and early intervention meaningful, the result has been increased mandated interventions. What that means is that because we're not supporting the system well enough and we're not supporting families well enough, we are actually having more and more child welfare interventions. I would say, too, that when we think about prevention and early intervention, these have to be investments that we don't give and take and give and take. So they really do need to be sustained.

I haven't had a chance to ask the Minister of Health and Wellness yet, but we had a really amazing presentation from The Nurse-Family Partnership program at the Committee on Health. That seems like an amazing program, but its funding was only guaranteed until March 31^st of this year. Honestly, it's a modest early intervention program. It's like prenatal to two years old. You know, in Ontario, prenatal is 0 to 6 years old - really recognizing that two years is sort of like the minimum that you should be looking at. So that's an example if that program is defunded in this budget. I don't know if it is. We won't even have people finish the program in this province. It's an evidence-based program that has a bunch of research and evidence behind it from other jurisdictions. We've brought it. The people who are implementing it had the best things to say about what they're seeing. So again, like that's just an example of when we have short-term programs that we don't sustain. Frankly, raising healthy families and healthy children is a long-term project and it's a generational project. You can't be offering things and pulling them back.

Thinking about, as well, the particular vulnerabilities of young people who are sort of in the teenage years and then transitioning out of care, often what they are provided for in terms of support looks really different. It's often not necessarily a foster family. Sometimes there is support to be living independently. They might be involved with Phoenix, or they might be in group homes.

[Page 2628]

One of the things that has happened with this revised Act is that there has been a radical increase in the numbers of reports because the duty to report provisions necessitates that. I think what critics have seen about the new Act is that the question is: Is the system's intent to really protect children? Or if we are actually going to think about addressing neglect - and there is a section in the Act, Section 3(1), that talks about what neglect is, but doesn't contextualize it in terms of systemic issues. I am sure that we all know too much about how poverty is impacted by systemic issues like disability, experiences of racism, and other forms of discrimination.

Again, a review of the Act, great, but there has been a lot that has been said about this Act, and these are areas where we could actually measure things because we can count the number of reports, we can see the number of children coming into care, we can look at these things. These are actually things we can measure.

It's not just good enough to aspire to a strong child welfare system and a transition for young adults out of that system that is positive. We need a safety net that secures meaningful access to food, education, health care, leisure, housing from prenatal throughout one's life. That's along with a vision where the vast majority of children stay with their families, and families are supported to overcome whatever challenges they are facing - income supports, mental health supports, or whatever it is.

I think that basically by addressing health and quality of life indicators, we can have a much stronger province. We talk about things like our productivity challenges. We talk about things like various economic challenges. Really it starts at the beginning and those critical early years.

I'm just going to scroll through some of my notes. We need a really comprehensive approach. We need to be providing families with the types of programs that are not only material - that's absolutely the baseline - but the types of supports that foster positive relationships, foster spiritual and cultural connections, that meet and support developmental needs, education, behaviour, life skills, and we need a comprehensive approach.

One of the other challenges with supporting young people after the age of 18 or 19 is, in fact, that they have often had such negative experiences in the child welfare system that they don't have trust in that system. We want these young people - I assume this is the purpose of extending these benefits and supports - we want to support those young people. We want the best outcomes for them, but if we've already had them through a system that did not respond to their needs, did not listen to their voices, or where they've had negative experiences, they're not going to want to engage.

[Page 2629]

Again, just going back to the beginning around youth engagement, I would love to hear that we have young people between the ages of 19 and 25 who were youth in care - there's the National Youth in Care Network. This is not a new idea. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky idea.

Youth in care are organized but have not had as much support in Nova Scotia as they used to. There used to be a lot of work, through the former Department of Community Services, to support youth in care to come together. There was an annual conference, and there were ongoing youth leadership opportunities because it was recognized that, for these young people - maybe they're changing schools a lot. They might be changing communities, but they need a way - just like we know all young people need a way - to be civically engaged and to be learning about their community.

If we truly want to support that cohort of young people, it's critical, but we need to start from the beginning. We don't know how the support is going to be accessed, so there needs to be a real focus on housing. From the homelessness hub, which is a major national homelessness hub of research, practitioners, and that sort of thing: 20 percent of Canada's homeless population comprises youth aged 13 to 24. We've studied this a lot. Honestly, it's kind of an overstudied population. It's like we keep asking them the same questions, and they often give similar answers, and then society writ large doesn't do anything.

In the first pan-Canadian study on youth homelessness, 57.8 percent of homeless youth had previous involvement with the child welfare system. That's a pretty damning statistic for our child welfare system in this country. If you talk to folks - if you look at the Halifax point-in-time survey, we have lots of data that shows that that statistic holds true in Nova Scotia, as well. The vast majority of young people who are homeless, in fact, are former youth in care.

That connection has been consistently observed, and we absolutely need to figure this out.

If we're going to make changes to the age cut-off mandated for young people transitioning out of public institutions, which is what this bill does, a critical part is preventing and ending youth homelessness.

If we're going to say that we're going to support former youth in care aged 19 to 25 or 26, we had better set a goal that is zero homelessness because this is the way that young people - the housing first model - this is what's important.

The minister talked about this, so I don't need to revisit. If you can imagine in your own life, perhaps you have children, and in their lives, parenting, sometimes much to my dismay, continues. I've heard it continues my whole life. It certainly isn't like we're done at 18, they've learned everything they need to learn, and they're ready to go out into the world and blossom.

[Page 2630]

I'm not going to presume we all did. Lots of us had those types of emotional supports, perhaps financial supports, but the types of supports that helped us through that transitional young adult way.

I also want to remind people that we know from brain science that your frontal lobe, which is where you do some critical thinking, planning, and executive function, is not fully developed until at least the age of 25. We also have these young people who, based on brain science, need support. We don't want young people to feel like, "There's your bag, there's the door, good luck."

[9:00 p.m.]

Housing is a huge part of what we need to provide, and also navigational supports. One of the things I think we probably all see in our constituency work is trying to help people who need supports of various types, knit those together. So income support is over here, there might be employment training over here, you can go to this food bank that day, you can go to this community that day. You have to knit that all together.

Again, if you have young people who are lost on their own, that navigational support is really important. You need to be supporting people to rely on the complex web of services that are there.

We also need to look at the justice system. Again, if we're going to support young people aged 19 to 25 well, we need to be considering what we can do in the justice system and how we can further divert from being involved in the justice system.

Often out of desperation or what have you, we can do a lot and we also need to make those systems trauma-informed, so that when young people - I've known young people who at the age of 18 had 47 placements in this province and in New Brunswick, so that's how much movement this young person had.

I would just say that they had a lot of struggles with self-regulation because that's what we do for our babies. We teach them how to self-regulate, because we respond to their needs and then we build that trust and then the trust lasts forever and that's how you learn to self-regulate. So if you don't have that you can have a hard time with that. I think having a trauma-informed justice system that specifically recognizes the needs of young people, former youths in care, ages 19 to 25, is really important, would be an important part of this work.

Again, this is where the silo approach to government stuff often gets in the way, because we have the Family and Children Services Act under the Department of Opportunities and Social Development. Then the impetus - the need - is to work across departments.

[Page 2631]

Post-secondary education: Luckily we have seen a lot of post-secondary institutions in Canada start providing tuition waivers for former youths in care. In Nova Scotia I think I'm going to forget a couple but I'll try. I know that NSCC has some, Acadia University, Mount Saint Vincent University, Dalhousie University, and I apologize to the other post-secondary institutions that I don't know about.

This idea that often when young people are moving to their next stage after high school, that involves training or education, it's expensive and we need to be able to support young people. That's an important part but what we're learning about that is that just the tuition waiver isn't enough. Often first-generation students don't come from families or situations where other people have gone to university, or sought professional training in trades, so how to support goes through that whole process.

There are very specific Nova Scotia things that, if we're working with young people aged 19 to 25 who were formerly in care, we need to consider. One is youth in care have a higher rate of being trafficked in this province. We have the highest rate of trafficked youth in the country. One of the things that happens when young people are trafficked is that they are definitely part of the relationship with whatever system they are supposed to be within or can trust, can depend on, that is broken. So particularly for young people between the ages of 19 and 25, and sometimes young people are outside of child welfare, they're in the care of the province, of the Crown, but actually it's very difficult to keep them in any kind of living situation.

I see the MLA who used to be a principal looking at me and I know there are educators in the room who for sure have seen (Interruption) Thank you. Cole Harbour-Dartmouth, that was going to be my guess. The MLA from Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, I know you've seen these kids, right? It's just hard to keep them in education because they're traumatized, they're acting out, and they're easy pickings for folks who want to exploit them. We need to think about that.

If we're supporting former youth in care - I talked about this yesterday in my rainbow budget - there is a higher proportion of 2SLGBTQIA+ young people in care because of family, community, and school breakdown. They're also overrepresented in terms of homeless youth. Again, this needs to be informed and taken into account, making sure that the people working with young people are competent in the areas of supporting young people around sexual orientation, gender identify and expression.

I earlier talked about the Home for Colored Children inquiry. We have a legacy of anti-Black racism in our child welfare system in this province. We studied it. We have asked people to share their stories. We should be learning from it. It should be right by our sides whenever we are considering amendments to the Child and Family Services Act. I haven't had a chance to go back and compare the recommendations of the Inquiry with the current Act, and what these changes propose.

[Page 2632]

I think I quoted earlier the recognition that you need to have a robust social safety net. You need to support people to not live in poverty. That's sort of step one. I know that was part of the inquiry.

Then also thinking about Indigenous young people, also over-represented in child welfare. Over the years I have had a chance to work with Cindy Blackstock from the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, who has fought for the rights of Indigenous young people who have been in care, and who is still fighting. When she does her research, basically, the overwhelming majority of Indigenous children are removed from their homes because of this perception of neglect, that probably is based in racism and colonial attitudes. It's really problematic. Again, these are the young people that we're talking about. The 19- to 25-year-olds are folks who share different and diverse identities, and have really traumatic experiences.

I welcome this change, but we need to be doing it from the get-go, and we need to do it right for generations, by the way. It's not just about the five years between 13 and 18. It's not just about one childhood. In fact, if we're serious about supporting healthy families and young people in this province, we need to keep doing it, generation after generation.

I think that's where the list of cuts - I can be corrected, but I understand that LOVE NS, Leave Out ViolencE NS, which is an amazing youth organization, had a massive cut to the funding they received from the province. That will likely close their program in Preston. There's this great program that has been working in Nova Scotia for well over a decade. They went to Preston, built a presence, built relationships, and they were there for the long term. When you work with young people, you know you have to be there. Then program funding is cut. That's exactly the kind of thing we can't keep doing to young people. Let's do it right. Bluntly, I don't think we're there yet.

There are some other things I want to talk about with this bill. I am going to turn to the question of the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers. Everything that's old is new again, or whatever that expression is. We have been here before, and it continues to fascinate me. We have been speaking with the College, and they were not aware this was coming. It fascinates me that we have professional organizations that we don't engage with before you write legislation and throw it on the floor of the House. I just don't understand why you would do that.

I didn't understand it with the Regulated Health Professions Act, because there you didn't even have to call 22 organizations. You literally had to call one, and you didn't call them. This government didn't call them. This is kind of like same old, same old.

I could not believe - I saw the changes, and for all the reasons that the Minister of Health and Wellness and the member for Halifax Armdale talked about registering and having a common framework for regulated health professions - that makes sense. That's a good idea, probably, but starting it this way is - I think it's appalling. I don't know how you could think that was appropriate.

[Page 2633]

When I think about that, I do wonder, in this case, if maybe there is a desire or a concern to shut down this body that has been quite critical of our child welfare system and other social programs in this province. Why are they critical? Again, as I said, I spent a long time as a non-social worker in the School of Social Work. Advocacy and analysis are at the heart of reflective social work practices. That is what people are taught. This is what you spend your undergrad and your Master of Social Work practising, learning, and doing.

Again, we have people working for the Province. We have people working for other organizations as social workers. They go out, they see terrible things, and they want to fix it. They probably see things where they think, "You know, I could keep doing this. I could keep apprehending children out of poor neighbourhoods. I could keep doing that - or wait. I could change the system. I could change the system so that's not a poor neighbourhood. I could change the system so that everybody has enough to eat. I could change the system so that parents have support and teach them about how to become parents." All these sorts of things.

I almost digressed. I'm going to digress super quickly. When I became a parent, between my partner and me, we had three master's degrees - blah, blah, blah. We had lots of privilege and lots of education, and we got a baby, and we didn't know what to do, but we became parents in Ontario during a real push on the Early Years. So, you know what we did with that baby? Literally Day 2, we walked down to the Early Years Centre and got to know the social workers there and the nurses there, and we went to the playgroups and learned how to parent. We need to be able to support people to do this.

This is what social workers live. They can see how systems are failing people, communities, and in this case, children and youth.

I valued what the member for Halifax Armdale had to say. In Nova Scotia child welfare services are predominantly delivered by social workers, 85 percent of whom identify as female or nonbinary. The profession is often seen as low-skilled work or - reflecting patriarchal attitudes - not seen as a health profession. At Dalhousie University, it is absolutely in the Faculty of Health, and that is a positive perspective to put on the work and the role of social workers.

Essentially - here's the irony. Just go with me on this one. Social workers are often working with communities, folks, and young people who don't have a lot of agency. They don't have a lot of control or choice in their lives. That might be mandated or not mandated. It might be contextual, like in terms of experiencing poverty. Then they think, "Hey, we could change systems and make things so much better." Then, in this case, they weren't consulted about their profession - their calling.

[Page 2634]

In a cruel bit of irony that their agency was removed. I can't help but think that, when we do that to a gendered profession - that is social work - that replicates systems of oppression and patriarchy.

We didn't talk to them, but we call them professionals. At the same time, honestly, there's - what?

AN HON. MEMBER: We did. They didn't.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Right. At the same time, within the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, there are a lot of challenges with workforce conditions.

[9:15 p.m.]

As my other colleagues have said, I don't see how, when your governing body that brings you together for continuing learning opportunities, that brings you together as a community, is treated so poorly, how that is going to make anything better?

In 2022-23, 124 social workers left the Department of Opportunities and Social Development. I will table this report. It's all in here. Just let me find that table. Here we go. I will also talk about the short-term illness leave hours. It's a stressful job. We all agree on that. It's an important job.

From the Department of Opportunities and Social Development - for instance, in 2017-18 there were 126,706 hours of short-term illness leave. Now, of course, that could be lots of things, but often short-term illness leave would include stress, burnout, that sort of thing. In that year the social worker resignations were 69.

In 2018-19, the social worker resignations were 83, and in 2019-20, the social worker resignations were 67. In 2020-21, again, life was a little different. There were 54 resignations. In 2021-22, 94, and as I said, in 2022-23, 124. This is just stressing families and this is stressing young people.

When I was fostering - and I think I've shared this story before - honestly, I had a young person in my house, and I hadn't spoken to Community Services for a really long time. I was like, "I have a ward of the state, and you don't actually know where she is." You, the Crown that we are all part of. When the child comes into the care of the Province and the minister, I mean, fundamentally, it is our child - it is our shared, collective child.

People were so busy. I think the social worker was doing risk management to say "Great, great. I'll get to that 16-year-old in a little while because I've got a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and I've got a baby." That is also moral injury. That's really hard for folks to deal with.

[Page 2635]

Again, I think that this was totally unnecessarily disrespectful - totally unnecessary. But this is the way that this government has chosen to do so many things - no consultation. "They surely wouldn't know anything about their own profession or what should happen. We know best. We're just going to write this legislation on the back of an envelope and table it and hope that it's okay."

I will remind you, as I did in the last sitting, that we are making laws. I hope that each one of us takes the time to understand intricately the laws that are before us. We might have a chance to talk about legislative structure at some point during this sitting. You never know.

Unless you are in the executive - so actually, unless you are in Cabinet - even if you're not in Cabinet but are in the ruling party, you have a role as a member of the Legislature to challenge and make sure that what is happening in the Legislature is appropriate. There is the executive, there's the Legislature, and there's the judiciary, but those are different roles. Anyway, I will leave that for another time.

When the Canadian Association of Social Workers did the report about why social workers leave child protection, the reasons include unmanageable workloads - 75 percent; increased expectations and administrative procedures - 68 percent; and unrealistic organizational expectations - 65 percent.

Again, why would you not have engaged with the college? Why would this government not have engaged with the college to facilitate a smooth transition?

I am sure that we have all experienced, most of us, a situation in a workplace where there was a workplace transition of some kind - a company gets bought or sold, something changes, maybe your mandate expands. You know, workforce transition. We all have experienced this in our workplace. It is incredibly unnerving. What we know about doing that well is that you engage people from the get-go, and the college hasn't even had a chance to do that.

I've got a number of emails in my inbox from social workers who are like, "This is not okay. I participate in the college as a professional, and yet none of us had a chance to discuss this and talk about our organizational fate." It really would not have been hard. They're there. It's a college. They have offices. You can just go find them. They have ways to reach all of their members. It's actually super simple, and you could have made it so much better for the folks who do really hard work in this province.

Instead, it's been thrown in here into an omnibus bill. I am going to talk about that. We talked about this before. We've seen it before. We'll see it again. Everything that's old is new again. There is quite a bit of literature on the controversy surrounding omnibus bills, much of which I have tabled in the past. Essentially, it is recognized that people put together omnibus bills - what it should be used for is a number of Acts that need to change over one simple, unified goal. They have a unifying thread through them. What happens is that they're often used to facilitate simultaneous consideration of complex, various, divergent legislative changes within one extensive bill.

[Page 2636]

In our system, for instance, what that means is that only the bill as a total goes to Public Bills. All those Acts that are in the bill, that means that people need to know what's being affected in that bill. It might not be reflected in the title of the bill. I forget the title of this bill. (Interruption) There it is: Justice and Social Services Act. It definitely doesn't say "Big Change for Social Workers Act," for instance. It doesn't even actually say "Better Outcomes for Youth in Care," which would be a great focus for a bill.

What happens in our system? It only goes through once. Other parliamentary systems at least have a committee process that is much more extensive than Public Bills. I just want to tell you that our Public Bills system is not adequate. It would go to committee, people would study it - it's true - and we would hear from stakeholders in a reasoned way. Here we are again with an omnibus bill. It's like, take it or leave it. There's some good stuff in here, and my colleagues have spoken to that, the good stuff around extending emergency protection orders. I bet you the social workers could have told you a lot about that, and maybe they did, about the necessity for that. That's really important.

Obviously, coming out of a crisis situation or a situation of violence in 30 days, you've barely found your toes again. It's a really difficult, challenging situation. A year appears to me to be a really good amount. Again, I would love to hear, just for kicks, what the evidence is behind that year. Was it like, "A year sounds good"? Is there actually research about - actually, eight and a half months would work really well for people to come out of a situation of violence and stabilize. I don't know. I'd love to hear about it. Again, we talked about the complex web of systems that people would need to connect to find support to stabilize. There are wait-lists for those, things like mental health supports and finding the right housing. The year seems good; would love to hear why the year, why not another time frame?

The increased protection of children through the Child Abuse Register. Again, that seems like a really good idea and probably also responds to our ever-changing world where people can move, people can serve alter identities, you can do a lot of things to hide yourself and to move on. I think all the ways in which we protect children from abuse is really important. That appears to be really good, and as the Leader of the Official Opposition was talking about, the support for privacy, so enhancing our ability to protect vulnerable young people and not have their identity shared online and exploited online. We know lots of young people who have had this happen to them.

Protecting online - I know some acrimonious family situations where there have been pokes on Instagram or catfishing, where someone pretends to be someone they're not, and they're actually the person who is legally required to stay away from the child. I think the more we can continue to think about those things and modernize them - we are seeing jurisdictions in the world ban social media for young people. I don't know how it's going in Australia, for instance. I have read a few articles. I think it's a challenging thing to do, but it's probably also a good thing to do. Anyway, we need to think about that for sure.

[Page 2637]

Again, it's an omnibus bill, and we are really not supportive of that part with the College of Social Workers. We're not saying we don't want them to become a regulated health profession. I didn't know that they technically weren't. Anyway, whatever.

It's not that we even think it's a bad idea, but it really is a bad process. I know you all can read the news. I know you can all hear what people are saying. There's a real distrust growing, and that does none of us any good. One of government's core functions should be to support social cohesion because it is far better and far less expensive and has way better outcomes than sowing dissent and division and leaving people out.

It really should be the core of what we're doing - building the Nova Scotia society together, even when it's maybe slightly inconvenient. Although, I swear to God, I do not think calling the College of Social Workers and asking them to have an online consultation. Just giving them a month or so to work with their members - I don't think that would have cost a lot of money. I don't think it would have taken a lot of time.

We really need to be thinking about how we can do things better, especially for these folks who do this important work. As my colleague the Leader of the Official Opposition said, we would, in fact, be much more supportive of this bill if we didn't have an omnibus bill that combines the two things.

We would urge you to consider doing that and for once doing the consultation with health professionals and with regulated professionals well and setting a new standard. It's still kind of a new year, right? We could learn how to do some new things. It might be a little uncomfortable, but we could do it. I know we could.

I appreciate the chance to talk about this. I look forward to when the next bill on child protection comes in. Our goal is zero. Our goal is zero children who need to be removed from their families, and here is how we're going to do it. Other jurisdictions have made that their goal. There are emergent models.

I'm fascinated and really hopeful about the Mockingbird Family program that supports foster parents, but I literally don't understand why we don't have the same program supporting families. In the Mockingbird Family program, I will say that foster families get far more resources with far fewer ties. They get more money with less reporting responsibilities than families who are struggling. It makes no sense to me at all. There are jurisdictions that are doing a similar thing to Mockingbird for families of origin. In Canada, there are models we could look at.

[Page 2638]

I look forward to the day when we have a child and youth advocate, when we have a youth-engaged approach to child welfare and to the well-being of children. I can remember back in the days when we had a child and youth strategy in this province, which came as a result of failures in child welfare and youth mental health. It was an amazing mobilizing government vehicle to really be looking at what we can do. How can we do the best for children and youth in our province?

[9:30 p.m.]

I know that's what we all want to do. I know lots of us come from working with young people. I know lots of us - we just know. We're involved in our communities. We want to find opportunities for young people to grow and thrive. For the most vulnerable young people, we should be putting everything we've got into this. This is going to make the difference. This is going to build a stronger society. So the next time, let's have a more fulsome look at the Act with some of these voices.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, before I begin - I'm not sure what the procedure is to do this, but I'm finding it very warm. I'm wondering if, with the blessing of the House, I might remove my coat while I give remarks.

THE SPEAKER « » : What we're going to do here is that I'm going to get the fans pointed down at you. I think that should help you quite a bit. I know that we're all hot here. I've got on three layers, so I feel it, and I'm on fire, which means it's hotter, so I get it. We're going get those fans on you so you can give a brilliant statement for an hour - maybe, hopefully, kinda - I don't know. (Laughs)

The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Thank you, Speaker. I want to take some time to explore reasons we have on this side of the House to question this legislation, spend some time exploring reasons we have to support this legislation, and finally, some time exploring why this legislation, on balance, may be a positive step but doesn't go far enough to address the issue it concerns. With that as my frame, I'll begin.

One of the reasons we have to question this bill - other colleagues have already flagged the lack of consultation with the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers. I won't retread that ground. It seems commonsense to me that if there is a group of stakeholders, of highly qualified professionals delivering a service that is an essential public good, it's important that they are adequately regulated. There's a piece of legislation that sort of gives that a frame that, rather than do things to them to modernize their profession, out of respect for them as professionals, it makes a lot of sense to do things with them. That clearly hasn't happened in this case.

[Page 2639]

A little earlier, the Minister of Health and Wellness talked about regulated health professions. Drawing on her first-hand experience as a nurse - as a licenced nurse - I take to heart much of her remarks. I appreciate her perspective, but I want to take us down memory lane for a minute about the risks of what happens when a government decides to take action to change the scope of practice of a group of highly trained, highly impactful professionals without consulting them, especially when that legislation and that policy are designed by people who don't do the work or have a lived experience of this particular scope of practice.

Back in 2018, under the - I'll choose my words carefully so I'm not called unparliamentary - autocratic regime of Stephen McNeil, not long after school principals were deprofessionalized, redefined in law as management, legally extracted from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, and set in a professional association whose objects did not include the right to collectively bargain and the right to publicly advocate for the needs of its members, the McNeil government came once again for a different group of NSTU members.

The McNeil government said, hey, it makes no sense to us why school-based social workers, school psychologists, and speech language pathologists who are clearly not teachers are certified as teachers. It doesn't make sense to us why they are in the teachers' union, so we're not going to follow the law and certify these professionals under the parameters that have existed for a long time. We're going to stop granting licenses to these folks. Instead, we're going to hire them as professionals under a non-unionized health care scope of practice. This is going to liberate them to unlock all kinds of impact that they can have, that they can't currently have, because they're prisoners of the school system.

This sounded great to lots of people: That makes sense; McNeil will show those teachers a thing or two.

Then we discovered that these folks are unique. School psychologists are not the same as psychologists in public practice or private practice. They have a fundamentally different scope of practice. They undergo a unique set of training, and once they graduate, their scope of practice is unique to the public school system. If you take the school out of school psychologist, you change the way they do their work. You blunt the impact - the transformative, life-changing impact - they have in public schools every day. You don't augment their capability; you handcuff or amputate their capability.

School-based social workers have a unique scope of practice. They are not everyday social workers who do social work like everybody else. They practice in a particular context. They work in a way that is unique to other social workers.

Speech language pathologists in the school system have a unique scope of practice outside of the way that speech language pathologists in private practice or in a health care setting perform their duties.

[Page 2640]

Why am I telling this story? Because a government that thought they knew better than professionals who understood their roles in a way nobody else did, imposed changes on them. Those changes limited and harmed their ability to support people. It was a long fight. For over a year and a half, we fought in the courts to make sure that the rights of speech language pathologists, school psychologists, and school-based social workers retained their status as certified teachers under the law in Nova Scotia and retained their representation under the Nova Scotia Teachers Union under the law.

Through the legal process, that's a fight that we won. We successfully protected the scope of practice of these professionals from degradation by a short-sighted change in the way these people practiced and did their work.

Now, I'll take the minister at face value. The minister says there's no intent to demonstrably alter the way these social workers show up for Nova Scotians or do their work. I'll take that at face value. It's on the record; it's in Hansard. We'll just leave it there.

If that's the case, then there is no harm in talking to these professionals about the way that this law may unintentionally alter the parameters of their work and whether those unintentional alterations are good for the practice of social work in this province. That's a question that matters not only for the workers who do the work - it matters for the people those workers work with and beside every day.

That matters because those folks are the most vulnerable of us all, who live on the brink of the ultimate breakup of family. Youth in particular live on the razor's edge of not growing up in the setting that's best for them and having to grow up in a second-best setting. That second-best setting, despite its best intentions, despite the professionalism of the staff who work in it - despite the best of intentions, despite all the good hearts that do that work - those systems fail those kids structurally and systemically, decade after decade after decade.

Changing the way that these folks work, through perhaps improperly or partially considered legislation, can create a lasting impact that further compounds the gaps and the harms that youth and families dealing with the care system experience. That's a price that Nova Scotians can't afford to pay. These families and these youth, most of all, cannot be expected to pay the cost of short-sighted legislative change.

That's not to say that this entire bill is without merit. My colleagues have done a wonderful job of highlighting the aspects of this legislation that are commendable. Credit has been given. But this one in particular - we all know the cliché: "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it." Let's learn from the recent past here in Nova Scotia; 2018 is not ancient history.

[Page 2641]

I want to sit for a minute about the lasting aftermath of the impact even for the year and a half where, by policy, speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, and school-based social workers were forced out of their scope of practice - by policy. Even though, yes, a court case set them right and technically made them whole, there have been lasting negative impacts on that population. Recruitment and retention of those folks, the fracturing of their work life, the government made a whole lot of ballyhoo about the fact that having 12-month school psychologists and 12-month-employed school-based social workers and 12-month speech-language pathologists was going to revolutionize the services that families received.

The fact is, it hasn't. Not remotely close. The disruption to the scope of practice of these folks created major issues in collective bargaining and pension for these folks. Those issues continue to make working in the private sector - these people who I'm talking about: speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, school-based social workers - are highly trained and highly in demand. They can go anywhere they want in Canada or abroad and get a job like that.

They have options, and because of the way this disrupted their work lives, many, many folks who are qualified to do this work in Nova Scotia have chosen other places. The unintended consequence of it is a disruption to staffing in this area of need in our school system - and boy howdy, do we need them.

[9:45 p.m.]

There may not be an intent to harm the profession. There may not be an intent to disrupt the way that these folks do this work. There may not be an intent to offend a profession. That doesn't mean those things won't happen if we don't take the time and the diligence to sit with whether or not this is the right way to achieve this change.

The cost could be major. This is already a profession where attrition and turnover and burnout are high. Other colleagues have eloquently captured the dynamic of this work. Folks who devote themselves to people who exist in the deepest, most profound emotional crises that any human being can encounter - that is the landscape of their work every day. Not many of us have the gumption to spend a lifetime in that work, and the few who do it are heroes who don't wear capes - but man, do they make a difference.

As this House, it is incumbent upon us to sit with whether these changes may serve to destabilize a profession that is essential to the well-being of our province as a whole. Whether we intend harm or not, the actions that we take in this House, the decisions that we make, the language we put on paper that structures the way people show up and do their work and are held to account and their ability to advocate for change on behalf of the most vulnerable Nova Scotians - Nova Scotians who have no association, who have no union, who have no representation, who are the farthest away from that kind of privilege - it matters that we weigh whether or not annihilating that kind of capacity by this profession is in the best interests of the province.

[Page 2642]

By taking pause, it doesn't mean that we can't change the way that they are regulated. Colleagues have already highlighted - could there be a net benefit to transferring the regulatory framework for this profession under the Regulated Health Professions Act? Yes, there is potential that it could work, but right now that path is not clear. The potholes are not obvious and the speed bumps are unknown. The problem with legislation is once you pass it, it ain't easy to fix and you've got to respect what's on the page. It's worth it to take the time to get it right on the first crack so you don't make a mess that you don't intend that is very difficult to fix after the fact.

When we look at this bill, that's one of reasons - this is a reason I want to highlight. We can learn from past experience and the mistakes of a former government. It was short-sighted, it was mean-spirited, and it was not in the best interests of Nova Scotians for Stephen McNeil to do what he did to school-based specialists, but he did it anyway, because he could.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. You can't use personal names. (Interruption)

My apologies.

The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Thank you.

It was wrong to do it, and aside from the fact that it was wrong, it harmed the province. It harmed people who do important work; it harmed the students who rely on them, who are our most vulnerable in schools; and it harmed the families who rely on the services that they provide.

Speaker, we have an opportunity here to avoid that kind of short-sighted, mean-spirited harm, intended or unintended. I know this much about change as a leader: You may not mean for things to happen because of what you do, but when things happen because of what you do, you are responsible for that impact, whether you intended it or not. It's a great opportunity for us here in this House to sit with that question.

I want to talk for a minute about reasons that we have to support this legislation. Sorry, I'm making sure I've got the right screen up here.

There's a report by the Child Welfare League of Canada, published in 2021, about supporting equitable transitions to adulthood for youth in care in Canada. The report highlights that Canada is one of only a handful of countries in the global north with no nationally legislated entitlements for youth exiting care. While in many other countries national legislation exists in which entitlements, including the option to stay in placement, are framed as rights without any exclusions or admissions processes. Youth who grow up in out-of-home care in Canada are subject to considerable inequities, placing them at a disproportionate level of risk.

[Page 2643]

Comparative research reveals that a significant number of countries have made provisions for placements in the child welfare system to be extended until age 21 and beyond. It reflects evidence that staying in care longer is associated with better outcomes, including reduced homelessness, increased educational attainment, and improved odds of employment and greater future earnings.

Cost-benefit analyses have been undertaken and indicate that the cost of not safeguarding aftercare and extended care benefits results in far greater costs to society in the long term because with these provisions, youth leaving care are less likely to rely on social assistance as adults and more likely to become successful taxpayers.

We believe that this legislation's action to extend the opportunity to youth to continue to receive supports through the age of 25 - the one thing that I would potentially debate is whether a hard stop at 25 is what's right or what's best for youth in care. Lots of research says putting a number on the official exit from care is unfair. Some youths are ready to exit. They're prepared before the age of, say, 25. Some youth need support for somewhat longer, and there are plenty of compelling reasons for that. We commend the government for adopting legislation that recognizes the need. Our comments previously - the past practice of when youth in care arrive at the age of 18, are handed their belongings in a very inhumane way, and told, "Good luck, away you go." We recognize this legislation is a step forward, and that's a positive thing.

This report outlines a number of proposed or recommended national standards for care for youth who otherwise would have aged out of care. I'll read from the report.

I don't have a printed copy. I recognize I have an obligation to table this document. You have my commitment that I'll have it printed and ready to submit during Orders of the Day tomorrow, but I don't have it at the moment.

The National Council of Youth in Care Advocates (2021) researched, developed, and validated the Equitable Standards for Transitions to Adulthood for Youth in Care. The first of their kind in Canada, these Equitable Standards provide a solid foundation for key stakeholder action and accountability across all jurisdictions, as well as within and across sectors. The Equitable Standards are presented across eight transition to adulthood "pillars" that define the areas in which youth in care need support to ensure a successful transition to adulthood. For each pillar, several required key supports are presented as actionable items to ensure that jurisdictions, organizations, and frontline workers are meeting the outlined standards.

[Page 2644]

And those standards - there are eight of them.

The first standard is financial. Every young person should have the financial resources required to meet their needs. Youth in care deserve to have a financial starting point that is above the poverty line, and allows them to pursue their careers, interests, and dreams. We recognize in this legislation that it satisfies or meets the standard. And that's a good thing.

The second standard is education and professional development. Every young person should experience an environment where they can learn and grow in ways that are meaningful to them and at their own pace. We recognize in this legislation, the potential for youth who previously would have aged out of care, to receive supports from various branches of government, to receive education that is meaningful for them, on a timeline that is doable for them.

I once had the privilege to work in a program called Bridges for Learning. It was a pilot program launched by HomeBridge Youth Society, just across the harbour at the Reigh Allen Centre. The program aimed to tackle a very serious problem in public schools in Nova Scotia for youth in care that often youth in care, while they are outside of their family homes, are often transferred to facilities all around the province.

In those transfers, spending months and sometimes years outside of their home communities, they lose touch with the community school that they are registered in in their home community. This often results in loss of learning for students of multiple grade level equivalents over the course of what should be their school years. Sadly, a lot of times these students lose years of their education because they're being moved throughout the care system.

That turns into young adults who oftentimes don't graduate from high school, or if they do graduate from high school, have significant gaps in their learning, and that becomes an obstacle to their pursuit of post-secondary education. We know that one key pathway to good-paying, fulfilling work, is through meaningful post-secondary education. For these students, they oftentimes don't qualify academically. So, the ability for these students to access post-secondary education on a timeline that's meaningful to them doesn't mean that they've got to go to university for four consecutive years on a September to April timetable.

This legislation provides enabling support for government departments to ensure that if a particular individual has reached the age of adulthood, it makes sense for them to take one or two post-secondary credits per term, over a period of six to seven years. That's what they can academically handle. The doorway would be open to that kind of arrangement. We believe that's a good thing.

[Page 2645]

The third equitable standard is housing. Every young person should have a place they can call home without strict rules and conditions to abide by. We believe this legislation enables multiple government departments or branches to evaluate the needs of youth in care, and to be supported with housing past the age where they normally would have been turned out on their own. And that's a good thing.

Relationships: Every young person should have people in their life that they can count on unconditionally and interdependently. Youth in care need to feel that they belong, have worth and are valuable members of their communities. We believe that by continuing to support these youth through their early adulthood, the relationships they have with caring social workers, other support staff, therapists that they may cultivate relationships with - that rather than being cut off from relationships with these people because funding and resources end because of an arbitrary birthday, the youth will continue to have access to these relationships that will sustain their growth and development and greater well-being through their young adulthood.

[10:00 p.m.]

The fifth standard is culture and spirituality. Every young person should be connected to their culture and spirituality in ways that are meaningful to them, safe, and at their own pace.

The sixth standard is health and well-being. Every young person should be provided with timely, ongoing services and benefits that support their lifelong health and well-being. These supports need to be offered within a trauma-informed, non-judgemental, harm-reduction approach without significant wait times.

We are pleased on this side of the aisle to see that multiple departments are participating in this legislation. It demonstrates that government, at least in a nominal way, recognizes that supporting these youth is an intersectional proposition that requires resources from multiple government departments. This law puts a demand on - thanks Speaker - multiple government departments to collaborate to ensure that youth are getting the supports that they need from the Department of Health and Wellness, from the Office of Addictions and Mental Health, from lots of other places as well.

Advocacy and rights are the seventh pillar. Every young person should have their rights respected and should experience environments where their voices are heard and their silence is addressed holistically. I want to come back to this one in a minute when we talk about why this legislation is not enough.

The last pillar is emerging adulthood development. Every young person should experience environments that cultivate personal growth and development as they transition into adulthood.

[Page 2646]

I want to turn for a minute to a different document. This one is entitled: Nothing to Celebrate: The Crisis of Youth Aging out of Care. This is a 2025 Senate of Canada report and among its contents and witnesses are the formidable Dr. Jacqueline Gahagan, faculty at Mount Saint Vincent University. Dr. Gahagan - her life story is truly remarkable - as a youth in care, has become arguably a leading light, an advocate for youth in care as an academic. Her formidable research that focuses on outcomes for youth in care informs legislation policy and reform of care systems not only in Nova Scotia, in Canada, but also internationally. Again, I don't have a printed copy ready for this time, but I will table this document tomorrow as part of Orders of the Day.

The report looks at provincial and territorial approaches to post-majority support, the very youth that we're talking about here, youth who are 18 through their early adulthood - since across Canada age limit for child protection services varies between provinces and territories as does the availability of transitional services once young people age out of these systems.

The committee heard about several provincial programs that provide transitional services including British Columbia's Strengthening Abilities and Journeys of Empowerment program, known as SAJE for short; Manitoba's Agreements with Young Adults and Supports for Young Adults Grant; Ontario's Ready, Set, Go program; and Nova Scotia's Path Program. Stacey Greenough, director, Child and Family Wellbeing, Nova Scotia Department of Opportunities and Social Development, explained the objective of Path is to build a support system for youth to ensure that they are safe, healthy, have positive connections to their communities, and have equitable opportunities to access the supports needed to thrive and reach their fullest potential as they journey into adulthood including 24-hour, on-call access to a community-based social worker.

The committee heard from participants in the Path and SAJE programs who highlighted the benefits of reliable supports at critical points in the lives of vulnerable young people.

Speaker, I want to highlight that the words I'm about to read are the voice of Nova Scotian youth who have lived in care of the minister here in Nova Scotia and whose lived experience in the window of time that we're talking about, 18 to early adulthood, should give us inspiration to think about this legislation and whether it's on point and whether it's enough.

Amber Moon, Youth Advisory Committee member, Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society, described receiving SAJE funding for rent, food, clothes, and by request, occasional extra funding to help with textbooks while enrolled at a university. Noting a long break from post-secondary education due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of a parent, Amber Moon explained that many youth face delays in their education due to personal barriers or systemic inequalities, and recommended that if a former youth in care is in school, they should get financial support for their entire degree. The clock should not run out on them while they are pursuing post-secondary training.

[Page 2647]

Similarly, Keauna Moulaison explained that before the Path Program came into effect, the limited fund provided to her was not enough to cover basic needs and she developed an eating disorder stemming from the stress of budgeting for food. She stated:

"Path funding has been life-changing for me. It has alleviated some of the financial stress of trying to stretch a limited budget to cover everything from groceries to school supplies. The consistency of this funding has allowed me to focus more on my education and personal growth rather than constantly struggling to meet my basic needs. I feel a sense of financial stability, which has made an incredible difference in my overall well-being."

However, she also noted that she would soon lose access to mental health care, and that the coverage through her university would not allow for her to continue with the private therapist with whom she has developed a relationship of trust.

"Lanell Murphy similarly recounted the ways that Path" - the Nova Scotia program:

has allowed him to accomplish goals and learn about resilience, responsibility and overcoming obstacles. He explained that Path has helped him to afford groceries, dental appointments, and his cell phone bill, as well as enabling him to complete driver's education and take a home inspection course at Dalhousie University. He also credited a youth outreach worker with helping him obtain employment.

While Path and SAJE were the most comprehensive provincial programs that the committee heard about, witnesses described other positive practices . . .

I'm going to skip ahead to another section of the report.

The committee was asked to "imagine a world where every young person, regardless of their walk in life, steps into adulthood with confidence, stability and hope - a world where youth aging out of care are not merely surviving, but thriving." Witnesses called for a society where youth in care are valued, loved, nurtured and invested in and where they are interdependently supported throughout their entire lives from childhood to adulthood.

[Page 2648]

As explained by Irwin Elman, Former Ontario Advocate for Children and Youth, Canadian child protection systems have, since their inception, been based on risk and liability, with surveillance as their primary tool. Such systems "cannot possibly raise a child." Professor Gahagan asked the federal government "to fix the system and, through that process, actually lift up these individuals who, by no choice of their own, find themselves with the state as their parent." The committee heard examples of provinces and territories, such as Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Yukon, that have reformed their systems of care. Even the nomenclature is reflective of this change: moving away from child protection and favouring the concept of child well-being.

Speaker, this legislation gives us hope that the three departments co-sponsoring or co-involved in this legislation have turned their mind to these needs and this kind of approach and we lend our support to that shift. That's a good thing for Nova Scotia, it's a great thing for kids in care, it's a great thing for families, and it's a great thing for our province. On that piece, we can say that we see a lot of value in the language present in the legislation.

I want to take my final few minutes to look at the question of why this legislation isn't enough to address the issue it intends to address.

I want to turn for a minute to another critical issue impacting youth in Nova Scotia. The Auditor General's seminal report on school violence documents an epidemic of violence in Nova Scotia schools from one tip of this province to the other. Its recommendations call for a comprehensive slate of actions to address the epidemic of school violence.

I recognize that the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development has, at least on paper, recognized those recommendations and has agreed to all but one. We understand the department has actioned some of these recommendations already. These are actions that are essential. They're good steps to take.

I highlight the new Student Code of Conduct; an update was one of those recommendations in the Auditor General's Report. It's an important policy step. Last year, I stood in this House in late debate and framed for this government that, while the Code of Conduct is a worthy and necessary step to address the epidemic of school violence, the risk of this is that we arrive at a policy and then feel like we've solved the problem. Because we have a policy, we have a solution, and because we have a policy and a solution, the problem will be resolved.

[Page 2649]

The problem with that tendency - and that's a tendency of governments of every stripe. That's not necessarily a rock that I'm throwing at this particular government proverbial. It's true that governments of every stripe tend to look at policy as the solution to complex problems. The problem with that is that governments of every stripe stop short of what's necessary to actually solve the complex problem. They stop at policy and miss the other key steps that come behind.

I want to come back to some further language in a Senate Report to talk about what's necessary. For the positive step that this takes to ensure that youth that formerly would have aged out of care will continue to have access to care across a number of government departments, this legislation does not turn its mind to how we stop youth from being in care. The Senate Reports reads:

While the committee focuses its study on issues relating youth aging out of care, several witnesses spoke about the importance of considering the full spectrum of child well-being, including working to prevent the need for intervention. Jennifer Charlesworth, representative for children in the youth office of the representative for children and youth in British Columbia stressed the need to do things differently, considering that Canada's current systems consistent pervasively leaded for outcomes. She believes that modifying some policies or adding some money here or a program there is too little too late. Both witnesses from the British Columbia office, and with the representative for children and youth, argue that Canada needs to reimagine its models to support the well-being of children and youth in the context of their families, culture, and communities.

Derek Montour also spoke about First Nations' approaches in which communities and families work together to prevent youth protection related issues by focusing on solutions centred on the family rather than the individual. He stressed that it's necessary to remain flexible throughout the youth protection intervention process and to allow parents to mobilize and be stakeholders in solutions to resolve the issues they face, which is not the case with the Youth Protection Act. The Youth Protection Act places strict deadlines, that may prove unrealistic to respond to and resect parents who have experienced multiple traumas and often multi-generational traumas.

[10:15 p.m.]

Representatives from the Montreal Haitian Community Office - Marie Pierre Ulysse, Board Chair, and Marie Suzie Casséus, Manager of Option Protection Program - highlighted a similar approach. They work with families newly signaled to the Quebec Director of Youth Protection to help them prevent their children and young people from entering out of home care. This includes working with families on parenting skills and demystifying the child protection system.

[Page 2650]

Marie Pierre Ulysse added that their work thrives on strength-based models with the parents, where the parents are valorized by the workers who are helping them, solidifying their strengths to be able to raise their children. She referred to this model as "community-centric," which is similar to the approach used in Nova Scotia.

As explained by Stacey Greenough: "The vision that we are seeking to support is that the community supports the safety and well-being of children, youth and families. That is a shift. You'll hear folks talk about child protection and needing to give up that authority and that power so that the family and the child have the voice at the heart of this and the community has the support that they need. It also becomes about strengthening the community, considering their culture and how we are bringing that at the very beginning."

Overall, witnesses argued that prevention reduces the social costs associated with involvement in the judicial system and youth placements in protection services. It requires that families get better child care or funding support. Amber Moon told the committee that this lack of support to their family is what led to out-of-home care.

While innovation and change are urgently needed, Annette King emphasized the importance of being vigilant about potential unintended consequences. She stated: "We have seen some creative initiatives and alternatives and solutions with good intentions and a reconciliation lens. Sometimes they are good. I would love to go into many examples, but I think there is an intention to try to not have kids in care or to try to help kids leave care younger into a family situation or putting them on a youth agreement and creating independence even younger. Sometimes those have unintended consequences that create different problems. So I think whenever decisions are made, we really are recommending a full child rights lens and analysis of the solutions. You don't want to just fix one problem but create another one."

The committee agrees that a child-rights lens and the best interest of the child must be paramount, as all levels of government find ways to better support families.

We've talked about some things that are in this bill. This bill imposes changes on a profession that's essential to the wellness and the outcomes that youth in care deserve. I would go so far as to say that any legislation that makes toxic the relationship between government and the social work profession will have the effect of harming youth in care.

You can't disrespect, you can't sidebar, you can't ignore, you can't talk down to, and you can't impose on social workers and the professional autonomy that they enjoy as a regulated profession and realize positive outcomes for youth in care. That's an important principle here.

The good news is we've got time to fix that. It doesn't have to be that way, and we have in this House the power to consider changes to this legislation, which would mitigate that potential.

[Page 2651]

We've taken some time to look at positives that are present in this legislation. Ensuring that youth who formerly would have aged out of care continue to have access to a comprehensive, holistic, intersectional slate of services across a number of government departments is a net positive. It's a big win. It means that kids will not be cut loose before they're ready to stand on their own two feet. It means that the Province and multiple systems will stand with youth as they find their footing into healthy adulthood. That's a good thing. It's worth noting and commending in this legislation.

Lastly though, I want to remind the House about what's not in this legislation. For all the positives that are present, this legislation only deals with some of the recommendations in the government's most recent review, but it says they're at the heart of or are the inspiration for this legislation. We know, based on findings from reports by the Senate of Canada and expert stakeholders across the country, that simply providing services to kids who otherwise would age out of care doesn't go far enough in supporting youth in care in Nova Scotia.

I take lots of people on the government side of the House who've spoken in this budget process at face value. There's lots of criticism about the budget. I don't imagine that surprises members of the government caucus, but I don't think anyone is being remotely disingenuous when they say they recognize the impact that this budget is having on real Nova Scotians in real ways. I know you're human beings. I may not agree with all your politics, but I believe you aim to serve your constituents and work to make this province a better place. I trust that much about you.

I know the choices you're proposing to make about how the government spends its money - or the money that belongs to the people of Nova Scotia. I understand that you're saying you've made tough choices, but I would urge the House that this piece of legislation has much wider impacts than simply changing some language. There's a real opportunity here for Nova Scotia to be a national leader in changing the desperately negative outcomes for youth in care. I believe that this is highly important work. There are few things that we can do in this House - there are few causes where we can apply the power and influence of this Legislature and the process that we're all wrapped up in here more than this: the kids and the families who are most at risk, who often suffer the greatest harms, the greatest traumas, and lifelong negative impacts. There are few groups that we can champion the cause of that warrant this House's attention to their cause.

I believe this bill has some elements worth building around. There are some positive foundations here. That's a good thing, but I urge the government - it's a brave bill to put forward. It's necessary. It's on time. It's the right time to do this right thing for these kids and these families. I stand in agreement and solidarity with you in that much, but I call on you not as a critic, not as someone who questions your heart, but as someone who shares your passion for a better province for all Nova Scotians.

[Page 2652]

Let us not stop at the limits of this bill. Let's entertain the brave conversation about the changes that we need to make to this system so that we embrace a preventative approach, so that - 15 years from now, 18 years from now, 20 years from now - when we look back on the passage of this bill, we can put our finger on this moment in time and recognize that the work that we did here changed the channel and transformed the story for these folks because nobody needs it more.

It would give me no greater pride to be able to celebrate a change that we helped make together for the benefit of Nova Scotia's most vulnerable, to know that, as a province, we took the lead in being more fair, more just, more intentional, and more proactive in addressing the needs of these families so that the need for care at a time when youth might otherwise age out becomes irrelevant because we've done the work of supporting youth and families at a much earlier phase of the process.

Those families grow up healthy and strong together because we chose to wrap the supports and resources around them that they need in their moments of crisis and trial to stay together and to build loving bonds that last a lifetime and promote healthy and productive lives for kids that grow up in those settings. The momentary experience of trial and hardship and trauma as a family doesn't have to be a life sentence to struggle in this province if together we find the courage to take what's in front of us and go further with it.

I would encourage the House to think about we can go a little bit further than we have here. What other steps do we need to take to make sure that we put in place transformative legislation that alters the way that we deliver care to these youths so that in the not-too-distant future the number of youth who need this protection have dramatically been reduced - not because we ignore them or we stop collecting data but because we know they have grown up healthy and strong because of the changes that we have enabled with this legislation.

Speaker, I know some people will take the time that I have spoken as some kind of indication that I'm trying to run the clock. I can't say how much this matters. I'm not a youth who grew up in care, but I went to school with lots of them who did. I have been a teacher of youth in care, and these kids and these families deserve our very, very, very best. This is a moment for all of us on both sides of the aisle to put our collective best foot forward to make sure that we get this legislation right so that we are part of the help rather than perpetuating the harm that has been so difficult to solve.

Speaker, I humbly thank you for the attention that you have given to the members of the House that have listened to my remarks. I look forward to continue discussion on this bill.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

[Page 2653]

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Some great debate here tonight on Bill No. 201.

I move to adjourn debate on Bill No. 201.

THE SPEAKER « » : The motion is to adjourn debate on Bill No. 201.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, could you please call the order of business Government Motions.

GOVERNMENT MOTIONS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, could you please call Resolution 351.

Res. 351. House of Assembly Rules: Amend - P&L Bills - notice given Feb. 26, 2026. (Hon. B. Maguire)

THE SPEAKER « » : The Honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : I move that the resolution carry.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I didn't think I'd be up again tonight, but here I am.

I believe when I was up whenever it was last, not that long ago, I was talking about - and I didn't put it this way then but I'll put it this way now - the punitive nature of this government, the degree to which this government doesn't like to be criticized, doesn't like to hear tough feedback, doesn't really like the democratic process dare I say.

Here we are. This is a motion that fundamentally impacts the rules of the House and the democratic process of the House. Yet again, I entreat the members to think about this. Ministerial responsibility is the . . . (Interruption)

[10:30 p.m.]

Oh, is this a different one? Okay, this one's not quite as bad, but listen, my comments on this one will be shorter. I didn't know it was coming. I didn't have time. That's the way the business of the House works. This is a teachable moment, folks. I did not know this motion was coming because we don't have a legislative calendar. We don't have a plan of when we sit or what's coming. Your colleagues in Ottawa know when a bill is going to be debated three weeks in advance . . . (Interruption)

[Page 2654]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. Stay on the bill.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : . . . and they plan when they're going to be there. We don't have that luxury, so sometimes we're flying by the seat of our pants.

THE SPEAKER « » : Stay on the motion, please.

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : This is a motion that impacts the goings-on of this House, and that is exactly what I am speaking to, Speaker.

This motion seems pretty innocuous. It has been introduced that way. It just changes the notice for private and local bills. What it says, essentially, is that the Private and Local Bills Committee may alter or waive the requirement of publication, of notice, of a bill.

Right now, we have some private and local bills before the House now. I'm guessing that hockey one might be more controversial than the member thought, judging from what I have heard from some of my constituents, but we'll save that for another day.

However, I do want to make a really important point. I really hope that the members will listen to this and that the House leader will listen to this. The reason that we publish and give notice of private and local bills is because they all seem like they're not that big a deal. By definition, these bills are housekeeping. We're amalgamating a society, or we're designating a rink. They are, by definition, housekeeping - unless they're not. What I want to say here is we don't always know if they're not.

Right now, we have a private and local bill; I won't keep people too long. This is really important, folks. Please think about this. At least adjourn this and think about it when I'm finished speaking. I'm really asking you to do this.

Right now we have a private and local bill that my colleague introduced amalgamating the United Churches. It seems great. Church attendance is down. They want to bring their assets together. This has been happening throughout our province, throughout our country, for the last couple of decades.

When I was first elected, there was almost mirror legislation that came through this House as a private and local bill. It was legislation to amalgamate the Archdiocese of the Halifax-Yarmouth Catholic church. The member, who is no longer in the House, brought it, the government member. It was slated to go to Private and Local Bills Committee. We didn't think much of it, but because notice was published, a class action lawyer who was representing victims of abuse of the Catholic Church saw the notice, came to Private and Local Bills Committee, and told the government members something that they didn't know, which was that the amalgamation of these churches could lead to the denial of compensation for victims. Not that it would, but that it could; that the change of that financial structure could have a material impact on the lives of people who had suffered abuse.

[Page 2655]

That's the only time I have seen something like that happen in the House in 10 years. I don't know what happened subsequently, but at the time, that bill didn't go through for that reason. The government paused and said, "This is a serious question. We should think about this."

That's why we advertise. I know that this just gives discretion to waive that advertising, but the people giving discretion are the members of the committee. What I'm trying to say here is that I don't think the members of the committee are going to be the ones who know if it impacts people or not.

You have a plan, but I really want you to hear me. Please think about this. It might only happen once in 10 years, and once in 10 years is too much. There's no problem with private and local bills as it happens now. Most members have seen this. They come to the floor, they go to Private and Local Bills Committee. Ninety percent of the time no one shows up. They come back. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. They don't take up time. We don't spend a lot of time talking to them. Nobody filibusters a private and local bill, I'll tell you that much.

But they can, in sneaky ways we don't know about, have an impact. For that reason, we don't support this motion. I'd ask the government members to just take it back and think about it.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, often when I am going to talk about a motion, I do like to read it to give some grounding, so bear with me here. The motion says:

Be it resolved that Rule 69 of the Rules and Forms of Procedure of the House of Assembly is amended by adding (1) immediately after the rule number and adding the following paragraph:

(2) At the request of the promoter of a Private or Local Bill, the Private and Local Bills Committee may alter or waive the requirements of paragraph (1), respecting the publication of a notice respecting the Bill, subject to any conditions the Committee may prescribe.

[Page 2656]

Sorry, Speaker, my phone went off silent.

I read this. I read it a few times, because I wanted to make sure I understood it was saying what I thought it was saying at first. I brought it to a few people and I asked them to read this, and I was basically told I was correct in my assumption that this would not provide more notice, but it could provide less in the end.

A few moments ago, my colleague talked about the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth Act. Actually, one of my former professors discussed this. He wrote an article about this bill in the Chronicle Herald. I think for the members to really understand what I am talking about, I want to read a little bit of this article. I will table it.

This was on November 10, 2017, and the author is Professor Tom Urbaniak. "Last month, Bill 30 was introduced in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. It was unanimously given second reading by MLAs after less than a minute of debate."

It goes to what my colleague said: We don't often debate Private and Local members' bills for a lengthy amount of time.

This new Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth Act is still before the standing committee on local and private bills, where it was rightly deferred for more consideration.

The implications are anything but local or private.

This proposed law would grant to Roman Catholic Archbishop Anthony Mancini regulatory powers that are currently held only by officials of the government. He would become, in effect, his own registrar of joint stock companies, with the unilateral power to create, dissolve, modify and completely control dozens of civil corporations.

This was supposed to be a simple private member's bill. Meanwhile, what the bill was actually going to do was give an archbishop unilateral power over dozens of civil corporations.

The new act would also allow him to use provincial law, not just church law, to require parishes to "work collaboratively" with him on all matters.

Without the publication of this bill in newspapers, nobody would have known about this. Nobody would have known how much power the archbishop was going to have.

[Page 2657]

There is another story on this, and it was a proposed bill for a Cape Breton cemetery on April 10, 2023:

Last Wednesday, a statutory advertisement appeared in the Cape Breton Post. It stated that the Nova Scotia House of Assembly is considering Bill No. 274 - the Catholic Cemetery Company Act. The bill was introduced by MLA Brian Comer on the recommendation of the board of the Catholic Cemetery Company, which is the legal name for Resurrection Cemetery . . .

I'm sorry, I said . . .

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : I understand what I said, Speaker. I'm sorry.

THE SPEAKER « » : Thank you.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : I retract that statement. It'd be "the Minister responsible for Addictions and Mental Health" . . .

THE SPEAKER « » : Correct.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : . . . and "the MLA for Cape Breton East." Along with that bill, an advertisement appeared. Professor Urbaniak read the bill and he had concerns. He called the Office of the Legislative Counsel to advise that he would be making written submissions. On Easter Sunday he completed a five-page brief on the Assembly's Standing Committee on Local and Private Bills to explain the flaws potentially in this piece of legislation.

You see, Speaker, when we advertise all bills, we can find flaws in those bills, flaws that we may not have seen before because we just thought it was an innocuous bill but turns out has huge implications. I'm going to table these. I hope my colleagues read them in full to understand the full extent of not providing advertising in all its forms, and why it is such a concern to limit that advertisement. With that, I take my seat.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cumberland North.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : I'm just going to echo the comments of my colleagues who have already spoken. I think in general we shouldn't be doing anything to shorten the legislative process so that there is time to do our due diligence and take a second look at any piece of legislation that's going through this House. If there is a desire by anyone to rush it through, it's always important to ask, "What are the motivations behind that?" Therefore, I do not support this resolution.

[Page 2658]

THE SPEAKER « » : Is the House ready for the question?

The motion is for Resolution No. 351.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.

MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD « » : Speaker, can I have a five-minute recess?

THE SPEAKER « » : Yes. Let's just sit here in quiet for a couple minutes.

MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD « » : Thank you.

[10:43 p.m. The House recessed.]

[10:44 p.m. The House reconvened.]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : I thank everybody for the great debate tonight.

Speaker, would you please call Public Bills for Second Reading.

[PUBLIC BILLS FOR SECOND READING]

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call Bill No. 200.

Bill No. 200 - Cannabis Control Act (amended).

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

HON. SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : I rise in my place today, Speaker, to move that Bill No. 200 be now read a second time.

It has been some time since cannabis became legal in Canada. When the federal government legalized cannabis in 2018, it had three clear goals: keep cannabis out of the hands of youth, keep profits out of the hands of criminals, protect public health and safety by allowing adults to access legal cannabis with strict regulations. We share those goals, as well, and they haven't changed since 2018.

[Page 2659]

[10:45 p.m.]

The amendments to the Cannabis Control Act are aligned with these goals and will strengthen the public health and safety for youth and adults. Having a parallel black market in cannabis doesn't accomplish these goals. The illegal dispensaries are offering a false sense of security. They're a threat to consumers, youth, and the integrity of the regulated system.

The illegal market is not subject to the safeguards on which the regulated system is built. It can amplify risks through uncontrolled potency, product uncertainty, and ease of access to youth. The packaging in the illegal market is eye catching and attractive to youth, while the regulated product is plain.

As a school principal, I've seen the negative effects of cannabis on youth. Our brains continue to develop until we are in our early to mid-20s. I've seen anxiety, depression, and other issues in youth. We need to protect them. That's why we are strengthening the Cannabis Control Act through expanded enforcement authority, increased fines, and clarified evidentiary standards.

I'll highlight some of the changes to the Cannabis Control Act: adding a new offence when landlords permit a place or premises to be used for distribution or sale of cannabis in violation of the Act; expanding enforcement by allowing the appointment of peace officers to enforce the Act, in addition to police; increasing fine amounts and setting mandatory minimum fines; amendments that will clarify that courts can infer a product is cannabis based on a common sense observation, such as appearance and odour - currently, courts can infer a substance is cannabis based on packaging, labelling, or signage; and permitting the court to accept a certificate from the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation as proof that a person charged under the Act did not procure the product at the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation.

These amendments are simple common-sense changes. The proposed amendments will strengthen Nova Scotia's regulated cannabis system, while strengthening compliance and enforcement provisions.

I'd now like to talk a bit about the reasons why this is such a threat to youth. There is growing evidence in the medical system about the dangers youth face when they ingest cannabis - adults, as well, but primarily youth. I'm going to read some now from some medical studies, and I will table all these medical studies.

Large health studies have found that there are real and clinically relevant links between adolescent use of cannabis and depression, anxiety, and bipolar spectrum diseases.

Higher potency THC is linked to cannabis use disorder, which can worsen anxiety, mood symptoms, sleep, and functioning.

[Page 2660]

A major European study recently established that substantially higher odds of first episode psychotics among people who use high-potency cannabis daily, compared with those who have never used cannabis.

There are multiple public health agencies that summarized similar evidence. Risks increase with earlier ingestion of cannabis, higher frequency, and higher potency ingestion of cannabis.

Large cohort work and meta-analysis report that adolescent cannabis use is associated with late depressive and anxiety disorders.

Recently, the CBC has been doing a lot of reporting on use of cannabis by young people. They report that psychosis rates climb among people throughout Ontario. People aged 14 to 20 are more often being diagnosed with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, compared to cohorts that came around earlier. Those diagnosed were more likely to be male, live in low-income neighbourhoods, and have received previous treatment for substance abuse. The CBC also reports that cannabis use among seniors is also up, and so are emergency room visits due to ingesting the cannabis.

Those are some of the medical reports that have come recently. Some of these are large studies. We have seen a growing number of illegal dispensaries across Nova Scotia. These are a danger to public safety, and that is one of the reasons we're trying to give our police services more tools to try to combat an illegal black market, which runs parallel to the regulated market.

I'll end my comments there and open the floor up to others.

THE SPEAKER « » : The documents are tabled.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : I thank everybody for the great debate tonight. I move to adjourn debate on Bill No. 200.

THE SPEAKER « » : The motion is to adjourn debate on Bill No. 200. Order. It's adjourning, it's not stopping debate, okay? All right.

Order. The motion is to adjourn debate on Bill No. 200.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, this concludes government business for today. I move that the House now rise to meet again on February 27^th from 9:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

Following the Daily Routine and Question Period, Government Business will include second reading of Bill Nos. 198, 200, 201, and Government Notices of Motion, Resolutions.

THE SPEAKER « » : The motion is that the House rise to meet again on Friday, February 27^th, from the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

[The House rose at 10:52 p.m.]

[Page 2661]